


The Leftovers

by hulksmashmouth



Series: Have Patience with Your Local Teens, They're Going Through a Lot [3]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Child Death, F/M, Fix-it fic, Gen, Major character death - Freeform, Parent Death, major angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-30
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-04-30 02:11:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14486529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hulksmashmouth/pseuds/hulksmashmouth
Summary: Maybe she's used up all of her good karma, and it's time for some bad.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> MAJOR SPOILERS FOR INFINITY WAR AHEAD DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU DON'T WANT SPOILERS!!!!
> 
> that being said, this is my reaction, because I was planning a completely different sequel to Home Again, it was all just going to depend on one particular character's death....and then IW happened to me instead. I don't even know where I plan on going with this, but I did want to snag The Leftovers as a title, so, yeah.

For starters, MJ isn’t on the MOMA field trip when a giant donut suddenly descends from the sky and starts wreaking havoc. 

Instead, she’s in the nurse’s office because someone (Ned) found it hilarious that she had never heard of or experienced a wet willy in her life, and deemed it necessary introduce her to the concept while walking up the steps into school. One sprained ankle and Ned almost bursting into guilty tears later, she’s out of the trip, waiting for her dad to pick her up and take her to the clinic. It’s not a huge deal, honestly. It’s not like she hasn’t seen the MOMA before. 

Might’ve been nice to get to go with Peter, though. She holds great stock in people’s reactions to artwork, wants to be totally sure of this thing they’re doing, even though she’s pretty much been sure for a few months now.

But anyway, giant donut, general mayhem, and it’s just close enough to the neighborhood that local authorities call for a total lockdown. For general businesses it means get people off the streets and into shelter, lock the doors, hope for the best. For a school it’s more of a severe weather drill than an active shooter threat: all the students are rushed to the lowest and most central part of the building, away from windows, doors locked, no one gets in or out, text your parents goodbye. The nurse unearths a dirty crutch in the lost and found and MJ hobbles to the science department to huddle next to Cindy in the dark. Her heart beats a little faster realizing that whatever’s going on, her dad is in the car on his way to get her instead of somewhere secure. Her hand itches to reach for her phone and call him, see if he’s okay, but in order to contain the threat of mass hysteria everyone is being told to remain quiet.

Cindy grips her hand against the cold linoleum, and she realizes that she’s shaking.

They sit there for an hour, Principal Morita listening intently to his radio for news from local authorities or the school buses bound for the day’s scheduled field trips and sporting events. MJ knows every time there’s news because he rushes down the hall and around a corner, out of earshot from anyone who might scream if they hear what’s happening. MJ tells herself she wouldn’t be that person, tries to muster a prickle of indignity at the idea, but honestly doesn’t know right now.

By the time her butt’s gone totally numb they call a tentative all-clear and everyone’s told to go home. A sea of parents are already waiting outside the school when the students emerge, tender-eyed newborns entering a new world of alien invasions for which the Chitauri could never have prepared them. Dad’s near the front of the crowd by merit of having already been on his way, and he squeezes her in the tightest hug he can muster without making her fall over before ushering her into the car. Fuck the clinic, they’re going home. 

Tabby’s in back, in her booster seat, clutching her favorite stuffed bear in a sweaty little fist, chewing on one ear. “Em, there was a bad thing,” she announces tactfully.

“I know, Bug, but it’s gone now,” MJ immediately replies. Tabby’s only three, she doesn’t have to live in the same world of unknowns that the big kids do. Make it black and white, make it curable by True Love’s First Kiss, make it something she can understand and hope like hell that it does go away, reinforces the lie, makes her world a certainty until she’s a little older.

Mom’s already at home when they get there, mad as a caged weasel wondering where they’ve been. Hugs are passed around like hors d’oeuvres. Her parents shed a few tears where Tabby can’t see. It doesn’t feel like a privilege that she’s allowed to witness their fear, clings on tighter. 

They have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch, and MJ remembers with a sticky lurch that she hasn’t heard anything from Peter since that morning. He came to see her at the nurse’s office on the way down to the bus, eyes shiny with remorse that she can’t come and tease him for knowing nothing about modern art, apologizing on Ned’s behalf another dozen times, kissing her goodbye when the nurse turns her back. Probably in the thick of whatever happened, finding his way home now that the threat is passed, lost his phone, she’ll get a text tomorrow with his apology and a recap that puts her mind at ease about the non-invasion.

Then Dad turns on the news, and there’s been another attack in Edinburgh. 

It’s spreading.

She doesn’t hear from Peter for the rest of the day and tries not to check her phone except for news reports, following the mess. Captain America is spotted on the Avengers base upstate; does this mean he’s not a criminal anymore? The sun sinks and it feels like no time’s passed at all. They have crackers and canned tuna for dinner because no one can focus enough to eat. 

Tabby is miserable because everyone is home but no one is paying her enough attention, so MJ takes her up to her room when it seems like the news has started looping the same updates over and over. They play Diplomacy Princess Barbie, solving problems in the kingdom without causing war to break out among the classes of society. She wishes it was always this easy but knows better by now. At least Tabby’s having fun.

It feels like her organs are jumping beneath her skin, waiting for news, waiting for a text, waiting for the house to cave in. Her heart and stomach lurch up and down the length of her sternum, colliding with each other, bouncing off ribs. Her abdominal muscles shiver like she’s bracing either to run or be violently sick. Maybe both. 

Night falls. Tabby falls asleep on the floor, but she can’t bring herself to lie down yet. She’s never been one to pace, reverting to stillness and contemplation, but doesn’t really want to think right now, either. Her mind is only going to places she’d rather not visit.

She picks her baby sister off the floor and thinks about junior prom this weekend. Never would she have committed to such a vapid adolescent ritual until Peter wormed his way into her feelings. He was— _is_ —so excited to have a school dance go right that she couldn’t say no, but did insist on ground rules for the ritual pageantry. He, of course, agreed before even hearing her terms: she will not wear high heels, they will not rent a limo, she will not wear makeup just because it’s expected of her, and she will not wear a ridiculously overpriced dress that can only be worn once, not unless it’s, like, _really good_. 

(And she actually did find a really, _really good_ dress. It was on clearance because it’s leftover from Halloween, black and almost sheer in places, embroidered with enormous patterns of spiderwebs and moth’s wings. A hilarious nod to her date guaranteed to make him go white, with the bonus of making her feel like a sexy Wednesday Addams. She can’t wait to show him.)

“Hey, so, uh.”

Mom and Dad are sitting on adjacent edges of the bed, not quite touching but each looking like they’re trying to muster up the courage to comfort one another. MJ thinks they might’ve gotten up to some end-of-the-world nonsense while she and Tabby were upstairs, but she’s not going to think about that because if they _do_ die today she wants to die _not traumatized_. They immediately look up and put on their most reassuring Mommy And Daddy Are Fine smiles, which relax back into shell shock as soon as they see that Tabby’s out cold. 

She feels even more embarrassed now. They’re expecting her to be a grownup about all this, too. “I think, um,” MJ starts to say, stammers, and the chain reaction starts. A blush rolls up her neck into her face, the tip of her nose is going to turn red any second, her eyes start to sting. Her voice is hoarse as she forces herself to chew on the lie. “I think Tabby might be too scared to sleep on her own. I-I think we should, maybe, all sleep in here tonight, maybe.”

“Oh, _baby_ ,” Mom says, and launches herself off the bed to wrap them both up in her arms. Dad’s quick to follow. They hug awkwardly in the middle of the room, a knot of pent-up anxiety surrounding the angelic bliss of a toddler’s rest, until she thinks she can deal enough to talk again.

Dad, Mom, MJ, Tabby, they lay in a row on the bed like the grandparents in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, all nestled in together, too hot to pull the duvet up. Mom rubs small circles on her shoulder and cuddles close, kissing the back of her neck, and it’s familiar.

A long time ago, when Mom and MJ ran away from Dad’s drinking with nothing but a trash bag full of clothes, they had to share a hide-away bed for a month because they didn’t have money to furnish the bedrooms. Every night MJ went to sleep with Mom’s hand on her arm, rubbing those same small circles, trying to reassure a teenager rapidly turning to cynicism for comfort that everything could still be okay. 

_And it_ was _okay,_ she thinks furiously, feeling tears roll sideways down her face and soak into the pillow. _We’re together again. That has to mean something._

Or maybe she’s used up all of her good karma, and it’s time for some bad.

Her nose is buried in Tabby’s curls, smelling baby shampoo and sweat and peanut butter with every inhale. Her little sister isn’t a rowdy sleeper, she doesn’t kick or thrash, she’s sweet as a doll, she’s happy and curious and doesn’t deserve whatever mess this world is evolving into. She feels her little sister’s heart beating through her back and soaks in the rhythm, trying not to freak out. MJ realizes suddenly that she doesn’t even really care what happens to her, she just wants her baby sister to be okay. It’s all she’s ever wanted, since the moment she held Tabby as a newborn, nothing else ever mattered.

“Shh, shh, shh,” Mom whispers softly, and she feels Dad shifting to hold her closer, trying to wrap them all up in his arms, the family he’s just gotten back after fucking up bad enough to make them run away, the family he can’t protect against what’s coming. 

MJ never understood those people who said they turn to the stars and feel _reassured_ by how small they are in the grand scheme of the universe. She doesn’t feel like an ant, and doesn’t want to be crushed under a cosmic boot. She wants her life, her family, her friends and stupid boyfriend, wants them all to go on living their insignificant lives, because even if they are just a blade of grass on the football field of the history of the universe, that doesn’t make them _disposable_. They’re still _alive_.

“Shh, shh, shh, baby…”

The room is too quiet besides the shifting of bodies and restless breathing. Tabby is the only one who can actually sleep. After maybe forty-five minutes Mom stops her quiet repetitions and just hugs her arm around MJ’s middle. After two hours Dad farts quietly and they stifle hysterical giggles into the bedclothes. At some point, her human body crumbles under pressure and she drifts off.

There’s no way of knowing how long she’s asleep. No one thought to set an alarm because no one thought to actually _sleep_ , but it must have been a while, because the bed is empty and the first weak hints of sunlight are filtering through the curtains when MJ wakes. Everyone must be in the kitchen already, weirdly quiet for her house, her parents. She reaches up to rub her eyes and feels something gritty on her skin.

The bedspread is covered in a weird, brownish dust she’s never seen before; there’s a perfect gap left behind, the width of her body, when she gets up to inspect further. It doesn’t look like anything she’s ever seen before, spread unevenly on the bed where Tabby had been sleeping; is it some kind of joke? Did they get the all-clear while she was sleeping and now her parents are messing with her?

“Guys?” she calls out, tentative, somehow afraid to be too loud and disturb what she first mistakes as peace. 

The living room and kitchen are empty. There’s no note on the fridge saying ‘ _apocalypse canceled, went to get milk_.’ Tabby’s room is empty. Her bedroom is empty. No one is hiding in the bathtub. MJ searches each room methodically, like she’s trying to find a dropped contact lens instead of a family, pulling cushions off the couch and peering under beds, trying to convince herself that if she’s organized about it they’ll appear and explain everything. Her heart starts to beat faster, and faster, with every stone turned to no result. She’s afraid to call out again, uncertain why the idea of breaking this silence terrifies her so badly.

Then she tunes in to the sirens, the car alarms, and the screams outside. Draws back the curtain and watches. People have spilled out of their homes into the street, looking around, searching, lost children in the supermarket. There’s a car crashed at the end of the block, how did she not hear that? A woman runs from her gaping front door, wailing, _No, no, no, no!_ like some bad TV melodrama, and still MJ doesn’t understand. Not until she checks her phone and sees the recent headlines.

There’s a video, sketchy quality because the original was ripped from the air so fast, of a reporter vanishing mid-sentence, her coworkers recoiling in repulsed terror. Only she doesn’t really _vanish_ , does she? She turns into a weird, brownish dust, dissolves, floats away on an errant breeze weaving through the studio. Someone starts to wail offscreen and the video ends.

There are more, new reports from Wakanda and videos from around the world, but MJ doesn’t want to watch. Just puts her phone screen-down on her lap and waits for something, anything, to make sense. Are they _gone_ -gone, or somewhere else? Is the dust some kind of atmospheric disturbance, or…or remains?

The thought makes her stomach churn, and she staggers to the bathroom to be sick.

It’s on her clothes. She didn’t bother changing into pajamas last night, didn’t feel comfortable in the commonality of cuddly cotton when the world was ending, and now it’s on her _clothes_ , it’s on her _skin_ , it’s her _parents_ , it’s her sister, her _baby sister, Tabby, no, god, no, Mommy Daddy please don’t leave me here alone I don’t know what to do I promise I’ll be better just please don’t_ —

MJ steps into the tub and runs scalding water over herself, rinsing the dust from her clothes and hair and skin, then feels like she’s somehow blaspheming, like she’s flushing cremated ashes down the toilet, because maybe that dust is all that’s left of them or maybe it’s just the debris left behind in the vacuum of physical departure. 

Why didn’t she go, too?

When she clambers out of the shower moments later, towel wrapped around her shoulders and trailing puddles, it’s to find her phone buzzing abandoned on the living room floor. Something in her inflates with a weak kind of hope, like maybe it’s going to be Dad calling, asking if she wants anything from McDonalds while they’re out. Wet fingers scrabble with the smooth case, jabbing the screen until it responds just short of switching over to voicemail.

“ _Oh, MJ, thank god!_ ” May Parker sobs on the other end before she has a chance to speak. “ _Thank god, thank god, honey, are you okay? Are you hurt? I was so worried when you didn’t answer the first time, with everyone just, just…_ ”

She doesn’t know what to say. No, she isn’t hurt, but no, she isn’t okay, either. But already there’s a kind of numbness creeping over her, a tingling creeping over the dome of her scalp, down the back of her neck and into her shoulders, everything draining out of her, soaking into the rug with the water from her shower. “I’m here,” she says, then pulls the phone away from her ear before May can go on. “I have to go…” May’s frantic voice is cut off as she hits the End Call button. 

So, May is still alive, but she sounds upset enough that Peter probably isn’t. Her family are gone, all of them, and she can’t stand the idea of saying that out loud yet, which means her mind needs something else to focus on, something to anchor herself. Her hand is steady as she scrolls her short list of contacts to call Ned Leeds. If anyone can figure out whether Peter is really okay or not, it’s him. The line rings, and rings, and rings.

_Hi, you’ve reached Ned Leeds! Or, his phone. Anyway, leave a message!_

His usual perky voice, the recording clearly rehearsed and then screwed up anyway. She might have smiled if she isn’t making an immediate conclusion about what ringing through to voicemail means. She hangs up and calls again. If his phone is just mistakenly on Do Not Disturb, she’ll get through after a few tries. She’s on his preferred contacts list.

_Hi, you’ve reached Ned Leeds! Or, his phone. Anyway, leave a message!_

_Hi, you’ve reached Ned Leeds! Or, his phone. Anyway, leave a message!_

_Hi, you’ve reached Ned Leeds! Or, his phone. Anyway, leave a message!_

_Hi, you’ve reached Ned Leeds! Or, his phone. Anyway, leave a message!_

_Hi, you’ve reached Ned Leeds! Or, his phone. Anyway, leave a message!_

_Hi, you’ve reached Ned Leeds! Or, his phone. Anyway, leave a message!_

_Hi, you’ve reached Ned Leeds! Or, his phone. Anyway, leave a message!_

_Hi, you’ve reached Ned Leeds! Or, his phone. Anyway, leave a message!_


	2. Chapter 2

It takes a few days, but with reports pouring in every day the remaining few scientists left have concluded that approximately half the population is gone. _Half_. Almost four billion people are gone. Power grids across the country stutter with the disappearances of workers; some fail entirely for days. All air and sea travel have been temporarily shut down because there are so few people left to operate transport, and _they’re_ are in no shape to do the job. Looting and general anarchy is running rampant, so many stores left untended. Some families are still miraculously intact, and others have been wiped out completely.

MJ isn’t the only case of a single family member being “spared,” but she also hasn’t told anyone her family’s gone. Hasn’t left the house at all. First it was shock, then it was telling herself it’s too dangerous outside, with the aforementioned looting and anarchy. Now it’s been a week and she just…won’t. 

It’s probably selfish of her, cooped up alone with her grief because she doesn’t want to have to share it with the rest of the world. Doesn’t want to hold hands and sing songs with fellow _survivors_ , because she doesn’t _feel_ like one. She didn’t _fight_ for what she has, she went to sleep and woke up in the wrong life, the wrong version of events, it’s _wrong_. She doesn’t want peace. She doesn’t want closure. She wants her baby sister back. And she doesn’t want anyone to look at her and call her out on that selfishness because they all want _their_ people back, too.

Doesn’t matter. She closed the master bedroom door as soon as she realized what was covering the bedspread, and when the closed door seemed to mock her, shoved an armchair against it to buttress against the door’s judgmental blank stillness. Some nights she sleeps on the floor in Tabby’s room, and some nights manages to make it up to her own bed. Most nights she sits up on the couch, watching the news that runs on a constant loop. 

Most network TV is on an indefinite hiatus, but PBS still plays cartoons for the remaining children to watch while the world around them slowly devolves into martial law and splinters apart. Governments are scrambling to find replacements for fallen leaders, lawyers and lawmakers trying to puzzle out if a disappearance constitutes a death and thus warrants insurance payouts and inheritances. There are compilations of the few disappearances caught on camera set to _Another One Bites The Dust_ and _Dust In the Wind_ because stressed-out young adults don’t know how else to cope except with memes. 

She eats cereal out of the box, peanut butter out of the jar, what’s it matter? But she cleans up after herself obsessively. The second any kind of vermin is caught in a ten-mile radius of this house, nature trying to reclaim her home, that’s personal. 

Someone comes up the drive and knocks on the door, calling, “Any survivors? Hello? Anyone in here?” and MJ almost doesn’t say anything, except she knows that she could be accused of squatting if the stranger concludes that everyone in the house vaporized and a real estate agent comes along next. 

So she puts her ear to the door and says, “ _Leave me alone!”_

The voice retreats, and she gets her wish.

_It doesn’t matter_ becomes a pretty common phrase in her head. Her mind spins in circles around itself as she digs out the hammer and nails from the garage and nails Tabby’s bedroom door shut, overworking itself as it tries to process that she’ll never see them again, none of them, Mom and Dad and Tabby and Ned, keeps reminding her every time she picks up a book and slams it down again, and every time the thought intrudes she tries to think harder that _it doesn’t matter,_ because it _doesn’t_ , nothing _matters_. It doesn’t matter if her parents are gone, or Ned, or her sister, because _everyone_ is gone. She finds a stash of chocolates at the back of a cabinet she knows only Mom ever used, hidden like a dirty secret, eats them all and then makes herself sick with the sugar and guilt, but it doesn’t matter because it’s not like Mom’s ever coming back for them. There’s no one left to care.

So it doesn’t matter. It just. Doesn’t. Matter.

Most of the food in the fridge goes bad during a power outage five days on. MJ takes stock of the cupboards and figures she has maybe two weeks before she’ll be forced to leave the house for provisions or…figure something else out. Because there are moments, late at night, listening to remnant humanity gathering around bonfires and screaming out their grief, when she isn’t sure whether surviving this is going to be worth it when there’s no family left to survive with. 

_Even just one of them_ , she tries to bargain with herself at one point, but then balks and shrinks away from trying to choose. Her heart screams _Tabby_ , but another part of her, secret and small, longs for the comfort of Mom’s hand on her shoulder while she whispers _shh, shh, shh, baby,_ or one of Dad’s stupid ill-timed jokes. She wants her childhood back, even for a day.

MJ’s grandparents all died before she was old enough to know better, so her first and only prior experience with death was after the Chitauri invasion in Manhattan. She was ten, her babysitter was sick, and Dad had a meeting at the hospital to discuss long-term treatment plans for the injured. When they got close to the epicenter, where emergency services were still picking through debris, Dad clutched her hand and made her promise to look at his belt loop and not their surroundings. Only MJ never had been good at following orders; she peeked to her left just in time to see a slab of concrete being lifted off a dead man’s body. The lurch of shock started like a hook in her clavicle, yanking down into her guts. 

She didn’t tell Dad because she didn’t want to get in trouble for looking, just sat where he left her during his meeting and _thought_ _about it_. That was a _person_ , with parents and a life, and now he was dead. He would never see another movie, or eat a gyro, or get a sunburn, ever, ever again. Dead was _dead_ , she realized that day, staring down at her palms, and someday she and everyone she loved would be dead too.

What if the time came and she wasn’t _ready?_

It launched a months-long series of anxiety attacks late at night, alone in her bedroom, afraid to go to sleep in case her body gave out and she never woke up again. She would creep out of bed and crouch outside her parents’ room, listening for Dad to snore, for Mom to make that stertorous grunting noise she made, assure herself they were still alive.

Sitting on the floor outside her parents room, MJ wishes she hadn’t been so scared back then if only because it still never would have prepared her for this. It was a waste of fear, a waste of time she could have spent blissfully taking Mom and Dad for granted like all kids should.

She’s been dreading this moment her whole life, and now that it’s arrived she’s paralyzed. Her heart keeps reaching for them, and when her arms come back empty her mind rebels.

It’s impossible to sleep at night in the silent house. Her bedroom is directly above Tabby’s room, and she used to be able to hear the Soothing Sounds machine that ran all night through the floorboards. Now there’s just the sound of the house settling, both unbearable and chilling when she imagines that it’s someone creeping in the bolted back door. MJ puts headphones on and listens to music at the loudest possible volume she can stand. There’s a carefully curated playlist of all bangers that she uses; there can’t be any room for thought between lyrics. She listens until she’s so exhausted it takes only moments after taking her headphones off to fall asleep, the chords and choruses still swimming in her throbbing eardrums.

The shock wears off after a few more days, replaced by something similar to sadness, a second cousin, a queasiness of the soul. Something isn’t right, the feeling says, but MJ doesn’t have the tools to fix that wrongness. That night she’s woken up by raised voices and looks outside. The neighbor to the left of her house has a huge bonfire burning in the backyard, and what looks like everyone left in the neighborhood is crammed in around the pit. MJ cracks her window open and realizes the noise that woke her is the hymnals they’re singing, clutching hands and wailing out their pain. Exactly what she predicted would happen.

Part of her yearns to join them anyway, to be held, to take comfort from shared suffering. The other part closes the window and sleeps on the couch instead.

Time isn't really linear, anymore. Days seem to pass in minutes. She woke up on a bed covered in ash a few hours or a few months ago, it doesn’t make any sense. Trying to reach back for her family in her mind, she feels like their faces are already fading from memory. Like it’s been years instead of days. Like they’re forgetting her, too. The gaps they leave behind carve notches into the inside of her lungs.

The pantry’s running low, now. MJ evaluates what she has left like she promised herself, how many days’ worth of food, and decides that the day she runs out of food she’ll make the decision. Whether she wants to keep going in this twisted world or take the coward’s way out. The rest of the school year’s cancelled due to mass hysteria pretty much worldwide. A few people from the ac-dec team, mostly Cindy, have started to reach out over Facebook and Instagram, but MJ ignores the messages. Doesn’t even leave them on read, turns off her wifi first so it looks like no one ever saw it at all. Like she vanished, too.

The dreams are the worst part. Or the lack of dreams. She reads articles about shock and grief after natural disasters and mass shootings. They all say that disturbing dreams are totally normal to have after such an event; it’s the brain processing what happened the only way it can. But MJ hasn’t had any dreams at all. It’s not that she dreams all that often, because she doesn’t, but it still seems weird, right? Like maybe she’s not as upset as she should be, like she doesn't miss them enough or isn’t sad enough that they’ve been ripped from the face of the planet with half the population. What if she didn’t love her mom and dad and baby sister enough?

What if she’s really as much of an apathetic asshole as everyone used to say she is?

She’s never been good at publicly expressing her feelings. It’s always been easier to put on a brave—or, better yet, cynical—face and deal with things on her own rather than run the risk of being humiliated for being too messy, too performative, _hysterical_. Instead she armed herself with a thick shield of apathy and the hidden ability to fundamentally explain just why the word _hysteria_ is sexist at its etymological roots and the history of gaslighting that accompanies it. It works for her, it’s kept her safe for sixteen years and it’s not something that can be unlearned overnight. There’s no one left to teach her the unsubtle art of tenderness.

Except that isn’t totally true, is it?

Every few hours during the day, her phone rings with a new call from May Parker, and she feels both guilty and terribly vindicated for not picking up. She tells herself she’s too busy, when really she’s been sitting on the couch for two hours taking queasy sips from a bottle of prosecco Mom got from a work friend and hadn’t decided who to foist it on so Dad wasn’t tempted into a relapse. It tastes awful and settles worse in her stomach with nothing to eat, but she’s read up on the numbing effects of alcohol and is conducting an experiment to see if that’s true. She tells herself she isn’t ready to talk about her family, and that’s mostly true. She tells herself that she doesn’t want to know what happened to Peter, because she knows, she just _knows_ , that no matter where he wound up on that stupid flying donut he would have found a way to get a message to her by now.

Then doubt creeps in, holding hands with her guilt like old friends. May’s probably devastated and alone, too, guilt says. Maybe Peter did get a message to Earth, but left it with his aunt to pass along, doubt unhelpfully adds. 

So she decides to call back for a goddamn change. It’s better than waiting until May breaks the door down and having this conversation in person. But she needs to be prepared. She bolsters her room as if against an oncoming siege: bottles of water on the floor next to her bed, rations of crackers and peanut butter on the end table, a fuzzy blanket she knitted Mom for Christmas last year that still smells like her perfume around her shoulders. Okay, so it’s more of an emotional siege, but still.

The phone barely gets through a single ring before the call connects. May’s voice is breathless, like she’s been running. “MJ?” she asks. “MJ, _honey_ , are you okay? I’ve been calling and leaving messages, but with the phone lines down I wasn’t sure if you got any of them or...”

It’s the first time anyone has spoken to her since...well, technically the second time, but the first time was May too and MJ was nearly catatonic, so she isn’t counting it. The sound of her nickname in a familiar voice almost brings a lump to her throat all on its own, but she swallows past it with fingers clenched in the blanket’s edge.

“I guess I ghosted you,” she admits with a shrug that she self-consciously realized May can’t see. “Sorry. I didn’t...I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to know what to say, honey. It’s been a bad time for everyone.”

She wants to ask about Peter. 

_She can’t ask about Peter_.

“Yeah,” she says instead. Her arm is hugged tight around her rolling stomach, gripping tight to a handful of flesh, fingernails digging in. The silence drags on too long, but she can’t summon any words that mean more than jack shit.

“MJ,” May starts with caution lacing the edges of her voice, “…how’s your family?”

There’s the million-dollar question. MJ puts her phone on speaker so she can more easily curl up with her head on her knees. Devastation rolls over her in lazy waves. Speaking the thing aloud makes it real, and even though the reality’s been sinking in over the last week she still can’t quite make herself open to talk about it. 

Turns out silence can be as effective as words, anyway. “Is it your mom, or your dad?” May asks. Then she gasps softly on the other end. “Oh, god, MJ, not Tabby?”

A low, guttural sound comes out of MJ’s throat at the mention of her baby sister’s name. 

There’s another, harsher gasp from May’s end, and the sound of clothes rustling and keys jangling. “Okay,” she says calmly. “Okay, honey, I’m on my way over right now. Don’t go anywhere. It’s okay. It’s going to be okay, just sit tight, I’m coming now.”

The connection dies, and MJ does exactly what May says. She doesn’t go anywhere or even move at all, because it’s all sitting on top of her, crushing her, if she moves she’ll suffocate with the shadows of her family sitting on her heart. The organ shudders in her chest like a bear stretching itself after hibernation. The numbness is wearing off and turning into pure, undiluted _pain_.

Hold it off. Just for now. Tell May that everything is fine and curl up somewhere to die. She’s breathing so hard her jeans are damp with her saliva.

“ _I can’t, I can’t, I can’t_ ,” she moans into her legs, squeezing them as tight as her hands can muster. This is it. This is rock bottom, with help finally on the way. There’s nothing she can do, nothing, it’s over, they’re _gone_ , there’s no point to anything if her baby sister isn’t alive anymore. There’s going to be a world continuing without Tabby Jones. Cars will keep driving on the streets, couples will get married and have kids and those kids will go to school and won’t ever know the bright, adorably dimpled star who’s grown into unicorn Adidas and started calling herself TJ? The world will continue turning and no one else will care that Tabby’s gone forever.

The rocking of her spasming muscles sends her toppling onto her side on the bed, shoving her face into the pillow and mildly suffocating herself. Just a little bit, so she can calm down. It takes a while, and the pillowcase is smeared with spit and tears and a little snot when she sits up again.  There’s a mural on her slanted bedroom ceiling of the New York City skyline. Dad made a point to remind her how good he thought it was every time the spirit brought him upstairs. She stares at the little red silhouette of Spider-Man nestled between two buildings until the doorbell rings downstairs.

If May doesn’t have news, then Peter’s almost definitely dead. She has to accept that.

There’s barely time to open the door before May’s busted in, folding her into a ferocious hug so she can look around the ground level without MJ noticing. She knows the tricks people use. Or May’s just incredibly kind and wants to comfort her. It’s a toss-up. “They’re all gone, aren’t they?” May tearfully asks when she finally draws back, reaching up to thumb away the tears still clinging to MJ’s lashes. “Oh, poor _baby_ , you’re so pale and—have you been drinking? It smells like alcohol in here.”

MJ shakes her head. “It didn’t taste good. I spilled some on the carpet.” More like half the bottle, and the rest went down the drain, but she doesn’t have to admit to May that she fell asleep watching _Star vs. The Forces of Evil_ until four in the morning. Anything to get her mind off of what happened for ten uninterrupted minutes. It hadn’t even worked; she stared at the screen and thought about Tabby and Mom singing her Happy Birthday the entire time.

It’s like she’s in the Sunken Place, watching her life from the bottom of a deep pit. Her body turns to go rooting through the cupboards for something to make, tea or cocoa. She’s mostly been drinking lukewarm tap water, so there should be plenty, but her hands keep fumbling with the boxes.

“Let me do it,” May insists, steering MJ toward the kitchen table. She automatically sits in her usual spot, looks up and feels a soft blow when Dad isn’t there to meet her look with a wink or bad joke. She hasn’t sat at this table since the event. Tabby’s booster seat is getting dusty.

A cup of tea is placed in front of her.

“I feel like I’m dead, too,” MJ observes. “But I can’t…it’s like they’re in the other room with the door closed. I can’t see them or hear them, but I’m in the same place. I’m gone, too.”

It hurts. Oh, god, it _hurts_. The knowing they’re gone forever but not knowing if they’re really dead at the same time. Wondering if there’s really another place you go, after. Wishing she could believe that there is when everything she’s ever read has made her too skeptical to blindly believe. She wishes she was stupid and could throw herself face-first into faith. She’s desperate for a sign that they’re watching over her somehow.

_Please_ , she begs her empty dinner table, _please haunt me. I don’t want to be here without you._

The tea tastes like salt, and burns all the way down her throat. She chokes. The floodgates are opened and can't be closed. 

She closes her eyes and starts to bawl. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. This chapter took a while and is very short, but mostly because it was extremely painful for me to write. I thought it would be a good idea to draw off of my own experience after losing my dad in 2016, but it made it much more difficult to get through more than a few paragraphs at a time. So. I know that this is probably a cognitive trainwreck, and that other people's individual experiences and reactions to this kind of disaster may have been different, but I hope that you'll respect the amount of effort it took for me to get this chapter out.
> 
> Things will pick up action-wise and hopefully be less depressing next chapter.


	3. Chapter 3

It doesn’t take long for MJ to stop crying; it’s been building up for a while, so the fit is short and completely devastating to her energy reserves. May’s knees must hurt, though. As soon as she started May dropped to her knees and wrapped both arms around her so tight she could barely breathe. When it’s over they both sigh in unison, half exhaustion and half relief. The wound is open and salted and raw. Now it can start to heal.

Hopefully. That’s always what they say in the movies.

May offers to order food, but with a puffy face and no water left in her body all MJ wants to do is go back to sleep. They crawl side-by-side into her bed, curled up like kittens, hands loosely interlaced, and have a nap until the sun goes down. It's soft and it’s warm and it’s exactly what she didn’t know she needed. It’s like being in bed with Mom and Dad and Tabby that awful night again, _shh, shh, shh, baby_ , Tabby grunting in her sleep. But the thought is still painful to brush up against, so she just buries her face in May’s back and let it go.

Hours later in the darkened room, she opens gummy eyes to see the neighbor’s bonfire glittering again outside her window, and May watching her from a few inches away. They’ve let go each other’s hands in sleep, but seeing her waken, May slides a comforting hand up her arm.

“You feeling a little better now, honey?” she asks softly. “You slept like the—like a log. These guys started up over an hour ago, I was surprised it didn’t wake you.”

Then MJ passively tunes into the singing. At it again, huh? She lets out a thoughtful hum, listening closer. It’s not a melody she recognizes. “I think they might be starting a new religion,” she remarks with a shrug lost in the mattress padding. “Been lots of singing lately. I mostly tune it out.”

May strokes the curls back from her face, and it settles funny in her guts. Peter’s aunt is a good person down to her core, that must is pretty much obvious from the second you meet her, but still MJ isn’t totally sure she’s earned this kind of care. Even after more visits to the Parkers’ apartment than she can count she wouldn’t have considered herself close with May, but now here she is, acting as a surrogate mother with comfort and warmth and very little awkwardness at all.

Then again, she thinks as they sink back into a mutual doze, maybe she’s acting as a surrogate, too. Biological or not, May’s a parent without a kid, now; why wouldn’t she actively seek a kid without parents to fill the void Peter is leaving in her life?

Everyone is coping in their own twisted ways with what happened. It’s not just her neighbors, according to the news, at least forty new religious sects have popped up since the event, and more desperate people are cropping up every day. Desperation breeds codependency, herd mentality, a willingness to blindly accept and swallow the first answer that clicks into place in a mind warped by pain. She can’t really blame them, though she does wish they would move their vigils indoors after sundown. Maybe Mrs Waterford thinks her house is empty, since MJ hasn’t taken a single step outside since the event. Or maybe she just doesn’t care.

Maybe napping for four hours wasn’t the best idea, since she spends the rest of the night hovering uncertainly between waking and sleeping. Jumbled thoughts chase their way across her mind and wrestle with one another for dominance but instead fall equally through somnolent gaps.

Once, close to sunrise, she wakes up to the sound of May softly snoring, and feels a great relief; she didn’t dream this. She loosely drapes an arm over the woman’s waist and shuts her eyes again.

At seven, May’s phone starts to trill loud enough to wake them both up.

“Sorry, MJ, sorry,” May mumbles, somersaulting out of MJ’s bed to find it, “I never turn it down anymore, just in case it’s…oh. Huh. It’s—Hello? Yes, this is May. He’s-? What’s…? Okay, okay, no, I’m not at home, I’m with Peter’s girlfriend at her house, do you need the-? Of course you don’t. Okay. We’ll be ready by then, yeah. I…thank you, yes, okay. Thank you. Bye.”

She drops her phone to her lap, looking puzzled as she stares down at the blank screen. “That was Steve Rogers,” she says slowly, like she still can’t believe it. “There’s a spacecraft entering the atmosphere; they think it might be, there was a faint signal coming through; it might be Tony and Peter. Someone’s picking us up and taking us upstate so we can be on-site, just in case.” Her eyes look weirdly tiny without her glasses as she peers up at MJ, and her lower lip trembles with cautious hope.

As she crawls mechanically out from beneath the covers, MJ only feels bone-deep dread.

MJ changes clothes and runs May’s through the dryer while she takes a hasty shower; an overnight visit hadn’t been on the agenda and she wants to freshen up. Just in case. Those words keep rolling around in her head, just in case, just in case, just in case of what? Just in case Peter’s been alive and stranded on an alien planet for the last two weeks? Just in case he’s been hurt, or tortured, or ground up into tiny pieces of dust and carried home in a jar? Just in case he missed her so bad he can’t wait to get back to Queens?

As a last-minute just in case of her own, she puts on a second layer of deodorant and a healthy dozen spritzes of body mist to mask that she hasn’t washed in more than a few days herself. Her hair can’t be salvaged, so she just shoves it up into a bun and has to call it a day before running downstairs to get May’s clothes.

There are a few granola bars from approximately the stone age at the bottom of the pantry, which MJ digs out just as there’s a polite honk outside. “We’re coming!” May screeches as she runs barefoot down the stairs and takes an offered granola bar in one hand and MJ’s in the other. “Okay. We’re going to…we have to stay calm and not expect too much, right? It would be stupid to expect…but if Peter was with Tony then there’s still a chance…”

MJ doesn’t acknowledge that line of thought. She can’t, not until there’s hard evidence in front of her. She finds herself shivering despite the blast of warm May air, blinking like a newborn in the sudden sunshine, unwilling to believe anything but Thanos himself getting off that approaching ship and personally flipping her off before obliterating the rest of the galaxy.

Hey, that was almost funny. She was just almost funny again, in an awful, fatalistic kind of way. Exactly her brand of humor from before.

They climb into the exact kind of nondescript town car that people in movies always get kidnapped in, figuring it’s the only time they’ll ever ride in something so sleep and professional except maybe for the ride back down in a few days or hours. Inside feels like a liminal space; the windows are tinted and closing the door somehow cuts off all city sounds, replaced by soothing music that has no lyrics to potentially offend passengers. MJ can smell herself, the interior is so fresh-from-the-lot odorless. Maybe she should have showered, too. She leans against the window and tries not to think too much.

The first and last time she visited the Avengers facility it was in a helicopter, racing through the air to get Peter emergency medical treatment after he took a laser blast to the guts. She knows he almost died, even though no one was willing to admit it. Going back to that same building, even at a sedate pace with calming music and an air freshener on the vent, makes her insides tight with dread. It feels just as urgent as last time, an axe waiting to fall.

May holds her hand part of the way there, their sweating palms slick against one another as they try to comfort one another without saying anything. Words feel too much for this small space now that they’re on the highway, away from the bustle of the city. But then they shifted apart, MJ checking her phone even though there’s no one to text her anymore, May playing with the ends of her hair, drifting to opposite sides of the back seat. MJ likes May, and she’s pretty sure May likes her too, and MJ spent enough time at the Parkers’ apartment over the last year and a half that they usually have plenty to talk about, but this is uncharted territory for them both. Mutual displacement does not a new family make, and even if it did, MJ isn’t sure she wants it.

The facility is unchanged, physically, from her last visit, but there somehow manages to be a heavy air of gloom hanging over it anyway. It’s not even cloudy, it’s a beautiful day, but her heart sinks at the sight of that elegant structure all lit up from the inside like a vigil.

Natasha Romanoff is waiting for them inside the main doors. She looks pale and haggard, hands clenched at her sides, probably impatient for them to get with the program so she can be with her team. How many of the Avengers disappeared, anyway? So far the news crews haven’t been able to permeate, but when MJ looks over her shoulder she can see camera flashes flickering at the grounds’ edge. Romanoff grabs her shoulder to forcibly turn her away from the flashes and guide her inside.

“The first signal came in early this morning,” she explains brusquely while talking as a quick clip. “Nothing major, just a blip, but it was enough to raise alarms in case Thanos decided to come back for Round Two. The second came in just before we called you. It’s almost certainly Tony’s voice, but we haven’t been able to get any messages back to him, the technology just isn’t up to it. We’re all listening in a conference room for the next relay. Down here.”

For being so much shorter than MJ, she’s quick on her feet, and by the time it’s registered in her mind that _we_ means _the Avengers_ she and May are being ushered into a light and airy room with an oval-shaped meeting table. Sure enough, the Avengers’ original lineup—sans Stark—is seated around it and staring determinedly at a piece of tech in the center. It looks like one of those conference phones in every office in the world, kind of dome-shaped and nondescript, but there are crackling sounds emitting from its speakers rather than some white dude going on about expense reports. They all looked like this the last time she saw them, too. Pale and drawn and afraid, with just he barest hint of hope in the backs of their eyes.

Thor is the first to look up. MJ almost doesn’t recognize him with short hair, but it’s even because he clearly has no idea who she or May are. He leans over to whisper a question to Steve Rogers, who finally looks up. Recognition and dread intermingle on his features as he takes in their slapdash appearance. She reaches up to self-consciously touch the bun piled on top of her head.

“This is May Parker,” Steve says, standing up like some kind of gentleman. “You haven’t met Peter yet, but she’s his aunt and legal guardian. And…” The devastation in his face grows when he looks at MJ.

It’s been over a year since they met, under pretty brief and stressful circumstances, but she kind of hoped that falling bodily on top of him because her feet were asleep might have left a slightly more lasting impression. “I’m Peter’s…I’m his girlfriend,” she explains, throat catching on whether or no to use past or present tense. “My friends call me MJ.” And, since the tension in here is thick enough to fucking smother someone, she adds: “ _You_ can call me Michelle.”

It inspires a weak acknowledgment of the joke around the room, if not a chuckle. She feels like an idiot. Thor, god of thicness and formerly beautiful hair, also stands and rounds the table to grasp first May’s hand and then hers.

“I’m sorry for the pain you must be feeling without him,” he says somberly, gripping MJ’s hand both gently and firmly at the same time. “My friends have told me he’s a fine man, and a good fighter.”

It’s weird, hearing Peter referred to as a man. He’s fully grown, obviously, but still acts—acted?— _acts_ like a kid whenever the opportunity arises. Goofy and silly and sweet, obsessed with old movies and Lego and video games. But he’s also a hero who shot himself into space to try and save the universe. God, he might have been dead this whole time, from the second the ship left the atmosphere, he could have been broken in half by that big jelly bean’s fist or ground to dust under his boot.

Or turned to dust the other way.

She and May take seats around the long table, leaving empty chairs as a buffer to either side, two feet separating the humans from the gods. Nothing much is said for a while, all ears and eyes trained on the tiny communicator in the center. Still static, but the sound wave seems to curve just slightly enough that they all lean forward a little in anticipation of more. Then back to flat static. The disappointment in the room is palpable.

It starts to feel like torture after a short while. Everyone’s too stressed out to talk more than a few muttered syllables every so often, the Avengers taking turns fetching heaping trays of coffee from down the hall because MJ and May don’t know where the kitchen is. A few more sound waves over the speaker, but still no real communication gets through. MJ puts her head down on her arms.

“Maybe we should take a break,” Steve suggests, “or at least listen in shifts. We don’t know how far out into space the craft ended up. It could be days before Tony gets close enough to for a message to come through.”

Across from his place, Natasha nods. “I’ll take first watch,” she says. “Why don’t one of you boys find May and Michelle somewhere to rest?”

A hand settles between MJ’s shoulders. May’s, she thinks. No one else is close or small enough. “I think you should lay down for a while, MJ,” she says. So it is May. “It’s been a tough few days; maybe you’d like to have a shower, too? That always makes me feel better.” Gently, she says it very gently, but with a definite intention behind it. God, MJ must really stink. “The first shower I took after Ben died was like, like…like waking up from a coma. I felt like a person again.”

She feels a jolt of shock, from her throat shooting all the way down between her hips and into her feet, probably all the way down into the core of the earth, and looks up to glare at May, because _rude much?_ It’s not like she wanted her personal tragedy broadcast to the six people on earth who couldn’t give less of a shit about her or the people she loves. Except Peter, anyway.

Steve Rogers is staring at her, stricken. “Who was it?” he asks with the sound of someone blurting out the one thing they were just telling themselves don’t ask don’t ask don’t ask don’t ask.

Anger joins the despair that’s almost become familiar by now, mingling with the goddamn embarrassment of having to unpack her dirty laundry in front of Captain fucking America of all people. It sits in the pit of her stomach and curdles, weighing her down, freezing her in place as a flush rockets up her neck and down her chest. Her hands clench around each other on top of the table.

“I lost my best friend.”

Another jolt; she wasn’t expecting Steve to speak up, but there he is, taking the bullet for everyone.

“Bucky. He was a good man. The best man I knew. Terrible things had been done to him, but he was getting better, he was recovering, he was _happy_ , and I…” Steve grits his jaw; a muscle jumps there. “I wanted to see him get to start over. Wanda, too, she was just a kid. And Sam…god, _Sam_.”

“We don’t have to do this now,” Natasha says through tightly gritted teeth. She looks how MJ feels.

“Thanos strangled Loki to death in front of me,” Thor admits quietly, staring down at the table. Natasha and Steve both turn their heads to look at him so quickly MJ can practically feel the air shift. He glances up with a weak smile, and a tear rolling into his beard. “I know you had every reason to mistrust and even hate him. But…he was to me, first and always, my little brother. And I am left with nothing, a king with no people. I sent my best warrior away in an escape pod at the first sign of Thanos’s craft, but I fear she did not survive.”

A heavy silence sits over the room, thick with desolation and hopelessness. MJ wants to throw up. This is exactly what she’s been trying to avoid by staying cooped up in the house.

“My parents,” she says timorously, “and my baby sister, we all went to sleep together in my mom and dad’s bed. I woke up alone. They’re all gone.”

Her ears ring with the gravity of the confession, so bad that she barely hears Steve saying _something something father was a good man I remember something something_. She doesn’t really want to hear it, anyway. It’s good to know that people loved and remember her dad, he always did leave a strong impression, but it’s still a painful reminder that he’s now just that: a memory.

In the far corner a throat is cleared; she hadn’t even realized Bruce Banner was in the room. It’s. Really weird. Knowing that there’s a picture of him on the biology classroom wall at school. He looks a lot smaller than his black-and-white print. “If it makes anyone feel any better,” he says hoarsely, “General Ross was reported among the, uh, the departed, so I guess we, uh…sorry, it was funny in my head, but now I just feel guilty, even if he _did_ try to kill me.”

“Let’s stop this,” Natasha insists again, more calmly than the first time. “We can’t keep going around the drain or I’m going to jump out the window.” MJ takes quiet notice that there’s no one the Black Widow deems worth reporting among her dead loved ones, even though they’ve all had a cathartic turn. She pushes back from the table. “If none of you are going, _I_ will. May, Michelle, I’ll find rooms for you.”

Hers and May’s rooms are side by side in a short corridor off of a communal space. It doesn’t look lived in; she thinks it must be a guest wing, but the Avengers probably don’t have guests all that often. She wonders if Peter ever slept in this room, before they gave him a permanent one, buries her face in the pillow and tries to find a trace of him there. Her family is gone, her parents and sister, but there is still a chance—albeit small—that Peter is still out there somewhere. That he’s fighting his way home to her and May right now. That she might actually get to keep her heart after all.

She tumbles headfirst into sleep without warning, wakes up feeling drunk to a cheek and pillowcase coated in saliva. The sun is still up, but it sits dangerously near the horizon; there’s no clock in the room to tell the time, and her phone is buried somewhere in the blankets. It’s been too long, that much she knows, someone let her sleep way too long, what if there was news and she missed it?

Staggering out of the bed, she immediately almost falls because her foot is asleep and has to wriggle it until sensation painfully returns. To the minuscule en suite bathroom to wash her face (and, after some quick consideration, her armpits) and fix her hair. There’s nothing to be done for the crease on her cheek left by the linen, so she rubs it a little and then hurries out of the room. Maybe there’s been news and everyone’s so excited they just forgot to wake her?

May’s room is empty. Her heart clenches and she runs the opposite direction, back toward the cramped little meeting room, thinking of Peter and trying not to get her hopes up, she’s _desperate_ not to get her hopes up, but it’s _Peter_. Peter the optimist, Peter the silly and sweet, he’s rubbing off on her, making her hope again even when he isn’t here. Maybe it’s a sign, maybe he’s getting close and she can feel it, maybe—

In her rush she misses the donut-shaped spacecraft sitting on the lawn, clearly visible through the many windows she passes. MJ turns the last corner into the conference room, and just outside stops short at the sound of May’s anguished scream. A fist closes around her heart and squeezes.

She doesn’t want to go in there.

She has to go in there.

Tony Stark is seated in a rolling chair, surrounded by his teammates, looking like he wants to die as he stares off into the middle distance. May sits across from him, both hands clamped over her mouth as she cries so hard she almost falls out of her own chair. Her glasses have fallen off. Every few seconds her sobs give way to another gut-wrenching scream of grief that buries teeth and rips into MJ’s soul. Steve Rogers is the first to move, to circle the table and put an arm around May’s shoulders.

No one even notices MJ standing there, and why should they? Peter isn’t her son, he isn’t her family, not technically. She was invited as a courtesy. A hanger-on. Nonessential personnel.

She backs out of the doorway, turns on her heel, and walks away. After some trial and error she finds her little sleeping quarters and unearths her bag from beneath the bed. Asking FRIDAY, the house AI, for directions is out of the question, so she just points herself away from the conference room and wanders until she finds stairs and, eventually, an exit. It’s not the main entrance into the facility, but she circles the lawn easily enough and starts walking down the gravel drive.

It’s a goddamn beautiful day, the sun warm and bright even as it saddles the horizon, the air so fresh she feels a little lightheaded as she walks. If the drive from the city was long then walking back will be even longer; there’s only an hour or two of daylight left. Maybe she’ll be able to hitch a ride back, or call a cab on the way. Anything to get her out of here as fast as possible without detection.

The cosmic joke that her life has become really is almost starting to get funny, MJ reflects as she kicks a pebble and startles a bird in the brush. No parents, no little sister, no boyfriend, no best friend, and a burden on whoever’s left. Even superheroes don’t want to save her; she’s a lost cause.

Suddenly and painfully, she misses Ned Leeds more than any of them. He was annoyingly chipper before, but his specific brand of optimism isn’t what she wants right now. She wants his _hugs_. The warm crush of his big arms and his overwhelming softness and the smell of Tide detergent off his clothes. Because knowing that Peter’s dead would be devastating for them both, but his first instinct would be to turn outward, not inward. He would have woken her up.

It feels like an eternity before she dares look over her shoulder, but reality is way less kind. The facility has barely even diminished from its standard splendor, she can even still make out the shapes of individual personnel behind the windows. Jesus, it hasn't even been five minutes.

The doors swing open and she compulsively turns her back, like she can possibly blend in and go unnoticed on an empty road in the middle of nowhere. Fuck. Now she’s going to get scolded and condescended to about n _o, really, you’re important to us, we tooootally care, we just don’t want to include you when there’s important news about your own goddamn dead boyfriend_ …

MJ hunches her shoulders to tune out the crunch of fast-approaching footsteps, hands sweating around the strap of her bag, heartbeat picking up in anticipation of whatever’s about to happen.

Only nothing happens. The footsteps come close enough to collide with her heels, and slow to match her pace a few yards back. She slows and the footsteps slow. She speeds up and so do her pursuer’s footsteps. She stops and the footsteps stop also.

What the fuck.

Turning a slow 180, she isn’t sure who to expect to be the world’s worst stalker. Probably not May, since she’s pretty much inconsolable right now, and definitely not Stark or—actually, it’s likely not any of the Avengers. A staff member, maybe, someone being paid to care. She looks closely at the man in the road; he has dust in his blond hair and is wearing something in the proximity of a tracksuit. He seems familiar, but she can’t place why for a long few moments.

“Are you Iron Fist?” she asks.

He rolls his eyes. “Kid, why the fuck would Iron Fist be at the Avengers facility?”

“Because all the other secondaries are dead?”

He thoughtfully purses his lips and, after a moment's thought, nods as if accepting her logic. “Well. I’m Hawkeye, which means I’m a primary, so Iron Fist can suck it.” She must look skeptical, because Clint Barton grins as he shoves his hands into his pockets. “Where you headed?”

Looking over her shoulder again, this time at the empty road leading away from the facility, MJ almost shrugs again, but she doesn’t want him to know how uncertain she is about all of existence right now. Instead she turns back to look at him with as neutral an expression she can muster, drawing from the wells of numbness she used to keep on reserve for school and dealing with baby boomers. “Home,” she says and turns back onto her path. “I’m over this.”

Seconds later, the sound of his footsteps joins hers again. MJ stops with a huff. So does he.

“Seems like you don’t got much of a home left,” Clint says conversationally. “I only got here an hour ago, but I’m pretty good at recognizing a kid in trouble. I’ve been one, met a few. Kind of a hobby.”

MJ raises her hand. “Is this a superhero origin story? I don’t have a lot of sunlight left to waste.”

“Nah, I won’t bore you with that shit,” he replies with a shake of his head, edging slightly closer. “I just think you’re gonna regret it if you bail right now. You’re still in shock, but it’ll start to hurt soon, and when it does you’ll be alone in the middle of nowhere, with no one coming or going but sketchy truck drivers.”

“And _you_ , apparently.”

He smiles, gentler than his grin this time. “And me. I’m more annoying than sketchy, though, in my own humble opinion.” Kicking a stray pebble into the ditch, he uses the movement to take another step closer to her. She steps back, wondering what his deal is, if he’s going to try and drag her back to the facility or what. “I’m not gonna hurt you, kid, I’m worried. We’re all worried.”

“Bullshit,” she blurts, feeling angrier with this aborted retrieval mission by the second. “None of you give a shit and that’s fine with me. It’s mutual. I’m just going to go home and, like…” She trails off, because she doesn’t know what she’s going to do when she goes home. The pantry was running low, the paper supplies almost gone, the power and water bill payments coming up to keep the house functional. She doesn’t have access to her parents’ joint bank account to pay those bills or buy groceries, and the savings from her old job at the bodega are pretty much a fart in the wind at this point. Really, it would be kind of tidy to just…leave it. Go somewhere else. Do something else. Maybe try out another plane of existence. She must take on a glossy sheen in her eyes, because a furrow forms between Clint’s brows as he takes another half-step closer.

“I don’t think you should go anywhere on your own right now,” he says softly, and reaches out a hand toward her. “Come on, come back with me and we’ll talk about how full of shit I am.”

He’s scared, she realizes with a small lurch. Scared of how she looks, how she’s acting, how she’s talking. He’s seeing something she isn’t seeing in herself, hasn’t been able to see through the fog of the last week, and MJ usually prides herself in her levels of self awareness. She feels sick and unsteady, thinking about herself from an outward perspective for the first time since she woke up without a family.

“May needs you,” Clint tries, and she scoffs again. “No, I’m serious. I know you probably feel like you’re a burden right now, but not to her. We were talking before, before Tony got here. Knowing you were still alive was the only thing keeping her going, even though you weren’t ready to talk.”

So far he isn’t doing a stellar job convincing her of anything, and it must show on her face, because he grimaces like he’s sick of himself.

“You’re right about the bullshit,” he shrugs, looking defeated, “but you’re wrong if you think we don’t care. It’s like you said; everyone’s fucking dead. We’re all strung out and can’t sleep and kind of want to die ourselves because half our team is gone. Losing you isn’t gonna make that any easier to cope with.”

As if she cares. They still have each other.

He closes his eyes, because he definitely can see that in her face too. "You knew Peter like we never could,” he tries, clearly reaching, but it strikes her in a way she doesn’t expect. “We only knew Spider-Man. It would be a…a _privilege_ to know him like you did. Please. Just stay a little while, tell a few stories about him, at least for May. We’ll get you a car home afterward, I promise.” His blue eyes look even bluer when they’re wet. Fuck.

Over a year ago, at Coney Island after watching Peter take a laser beam to the gut, MJ made him a promise. More of a threat, actually. She said if he died she would tell the world he was Spider-Man. She would make sure everyone knew exactly who he was and what he had done for them. Every little old lady he helped across the street, every cat rescued from a tree, every scared girl he walked home after dark. They all needed to know. And the Avengers needed to know the rest, who he was when he wasn’t Spider-Man, the dumb kid she nurtured a painful crush on months before he was ever a superhero, who spent his free time building Lego with Ned and helping his aunt grocery shop for things she could actually cook, who loved with his entire heart and won’t ever, ever get to become the man he should have.

“ _One hour_ ,” she croaks, her throat feeling tight and dry. “I’ll stay for an hour. Then I go home and you don’t ever speak to me again. I’m done with Avengers.”

She hands him her shoulder bag and crosses her arms for the short walk back up the drive.


	4. Chapter 4

MJ doesn’t leave after her promised hour is up.  

Walking back into the facility is one of the more embarrassing moments of her life, every step back up the drive bringing home the reality that she just pitched a teenage fit of epic proportions. She doesn’t want to look at anyone, let alone talk, but she made a stupid promise and figures the sooner she rips off the band-aid, the better. 

“No one’s mad,” Clint says as if he can read her thoughts.

“Shocked anyone even noticed I left,” she mutters, and hates just how petulant her own voice sounds. Since when is she a needy kid? She practically changed her own diapers as a baby, as Mom used to say. Always independent, always demanding to learn how to do things for herself, not even much of a crier and she never threw tantrums as a toddler. It’s like she’s going through her terrible twos fourteen years late.

Clint doesn’t even look at her, just reaches out and slugs her on the arm. “We noticed. Or, Bruce noticed. He saw you leave, thought you were going to your room, then FRIDAY‘s sensors caught the stairwell door opening.”

Huh. She really thought no one had seen her there. Doctor Banner is a surprising guy. “So they sent you,” she presumes. “Are you, like, the kitten wrangler around here?”

He snorts in amusement. “Unofficially,” he says. “What can I say? I got a way with flight risks. And before you say it, because you’re bright and I know you will— _yes_ , my way of getting through to said flight risks _is_ by annoying them.” 

The anger hasn’t abated yet, but it’s settled down into a low and steady throb behind her ears as they wind through the halls to what looks like a restaurant kitchen. It’s massive and hi-tech, with state-of-the -art appliances. Clint stashes her bag under a huge prep station and leads her into an adjoining lounge where everyone—awkwardly minus May—has gathered. As opposed to the last time she entered an occupied room, they all look up. 

The Avengers look like a sorry bunch now that they’re reduced to their original lineup. They only take up a fraction of the exceedingly comfortable-looking furniture with large gaps separating them from one another. It’s like the first day of summer camp in here.

“So,” she says, “you all look terrible.”

Clint gives her a bracing pat on the back before diving onto the couch next to Natasha and putting a protective arm around her shoulders. She looks smaller than usual, pale and drawn and angry as MJ feels. Eyes green as poison meets her own. “You look worse.”

It’s most likely true, so there’s little point in contesting it. Instead her eyes scan the room, the pale faces, the grief-heavy shoulders. MJ finds an open space not too close to anyone, between Thor and Steve, and sits with her knees curled against her chest. Her shoes thunk softly on the hardwood as she toes them off, trying to be comfortable in the least comfortable room in the known universe.

“The first time I met Peter,” she says quickly and without letting herself think about it too hard, “was the second week of freshman year. I started late because my parents had just split up and the paperwork got lost, so I was just…pissed. Nothing like my _usual_ sunshine-and-lollipops self, obviously. I was pissed at my dad because he wouldn’t just _stop being an alcoholic_ , and I was pissed at my mom for making us move even though she kept trying to explain things to me like I was an adult, which only made me even madder because I was fourteen, and—anyway. So. I’m pissed and it’s my first day, and Peter gets assigned as my peer ambassador. So he’s, like, the Welcome Wagon. And this is at least six months before Spider-Man, so he’s four inches shorter and wearing glasses and so skinny you can practically see through him, and he was, like. The most annoying person I had ever met. When you’re going through hell and this adorable bouncy nerd is guiding you through the school like _This is the chemistry lab, it’s my favorite spot in the school! Last week, Ned made something blow up and we didn’t even get in trouble! This is where the chess club practices! This is the lunch room! Yadadadadada!_ it makes you kind of want to kill yourself and everyone around you.”

It’s kind of a miracle; people are _laughing_. Steve’s got a hand covering his mouth to hide his smile, like it’s something to be ashamed of, Thor’s outwardly beaming, Bruce staring at his lap with deeper creases at the corners of his eyes, Clint’s chortling into Natasha’s hair, Tony’s staring deliberately in the opposite direction, it’s actually working.

“So we get to the end, and I’m about to garrote him with my backpack strap. And I think that he can tell I’m not exactly happy with the way my life is going, because as we’re winding down he’s like _And if you ever have a bad day and need anything_ … And I’m thinking, if this loser directs me to the school counselor’s office, I swear, he’s done for, he’s dead and I’ll bury him in the football field. But instead, he, um. He.” 

The smile on her own lips suddenly strains, painful, even as she feels the happiness of the memory washing over her like a warm blanket. “He opens up his locker, like he’s the doorman at a fancy hotel or something, and says in that stupid allergy relief spray advertisement voice: _My door is always open_. And there’s, like, the biggest bag of fun size peanut butter cups I’ve ever seen hidden behind his books. Like, a Costco-at-Halloween-sized bag. And he looks me dead in the eyes, as serious as he’s ever been in his whole life, and tells me the combination for the lock, and I checked the next week and it worked. I could’ve stolen all his stuff and he didn’t even care if it meant he could offer me a piece of candy.

“And I just… _fell for it_ ,” she admits with a sheepish smile, glancing up and seeing that Steve’s hanging rapt on her every word. The rest are listening, sure, but Steve looks like this is the only thing keeping him alive. “ _Immediately_. I was obsessed with him. I wouldn’t _talk_ to him, but just… _be_ around him. Learn about him, what he liked and didn’t like, where he sat at lunch, little stuff. In study period I would sit, like, a row back and two to the left of him so I could see when he was reading for English. I was in this, like…May calls it _gooey teenager love_. With him. But I was _fourteen_ and I wanted to go to Harvard, so I was like, no way, I’m just going to obsess over him for a while, get over it, maybe look him up when I’m the president. But…I guess he had other plans. And that was okay with me.”

Clint and Natasha exchange the kind of look and conspiratorial smile that comes with the reminder of other plans getting in the way. She taps on the back of his hand and he taps on her knee, and then they go still and silent as church mice. Gross.

“I thought maybe it was just a serious glow-up when he shot up four inches and got swoll pretty much overnight,” MJ admits, her knees swaying side to side, "at least at first, but after his uncle was killed I kind of pieced it together. It _sucked_. I hated even kind of knowing something like that. I wasn’t even really his friend and I knew his biggest secret.”

“He wasn’t exactly stellar at keeping secrets,” Tony chimes in, the levity in his voice coming out like water forced from a rusty pipe. “He has the old suit in the crawl space above his bedroom, one wrong move and it fell right out for God and everyone to see.” 

“And took video the entire time he was in Germany,” MJ adds, the knot of pain in her chest loosening as the smile on her face grows. The Avengers minus Tony look at her gobsmacked, like they don’t believe anyone with a secret identity could be that stupid. “I’m serious, he showed it to me, it’s on my phone right now, we can watch it...if you guys want.”

There’s a general murmur of consent around the room, bodies shifting in seats to get more comfortable as MJ pulls out her phone and starts scrolling through her media. There’s an embarrassing amount of Peter-related content in here; Snapchat screenshots and video messages and texts she didn’t want her phone to automatically delete after a month. A fresh lump forms in her throat as she looks at all the miniature thumbnails of Peter’s face, doubting whether this is a good idea after all now that she knows she’ll never see that stupid face again. Her hands start to shake. 

An unfamiliar widget she definitely didn’t install pops up on her phone screen; it’s a smiling, feminine face with a red ponytail, and when she touches it at Tony’s encouraging gesture the house AI, FRIDAY, takes charge to find the video and hook her phone to an unseen overhead projector.

There’s a quiet sense of expectation as the title screen, “a Film by Peter Parker,” finally pulls up, everyone tuning in with rapt attention. The serious mood is immediately destroyed by Peter’s tough-guy voiceover commentary: _New York, Queens. It’s a rough borough, but hey, it’s home_ ; they all bust up laughing because it’s just so _Peter_ to get a kick out of doing voiceover for a video he thought no one would ever see. To not realize there’s a whole suite attached to his hotel room. To sneak out and crash a house party while exploring Berlin—Tony makes a noise like a distressed trumpet seeing that. Peter apparently never showed him this. 

_Ohmygod this was the greatest day of my life!_ he says breathlessly as he pulls off his mask, shaking out his wild hair, narrating the events he already caught on film, and by the time the video ends everyone is laughing except MJ. Oh, she’s smiling, because how can you not while watching this? But there are tears, too. More than a few, dripping onto the knees of her jeans because she doesn’t want to draw too much attention to herself by wiping them away.

The next video starts playing automatically after the first ends. Peter sent it to her a month after they started dating, when she was out sick from school. 

_Hey MJ!_ he says in that same urgent _ohmygodmylifeisamazing_ breathless voice as he catapults himself onscreen. He holds an enormous bag of Fun Size Milky Way bars aloft with a stern look. _I got these for you, but on the condition that you can’t have any until you come back to school, because I miss you a lot and it sucks so you can’t ever be sick again. Deal? Okay, Ned’s coming, bye feel better I was just joking I’ll bring these by tonight-!_ and then a Ned-shaped shadow closes out the message as the bell rings in the background.

_Hey MJ!_ the next video starts. Peter’s whispering and his room is dark, but there’s no less enthusiasm in his voice. _I just remembered this tweet I saw where, like, someone working at Starbucks was like ‘Zachary Quinto thinks he can come into MY Starbucks and give a fake name, girl check your eyebrows,’ and I was just gonna send you the link but I couldn’t find it, but it was really funny. Okay, goodnight, see you tomorrow._

_Hey MJ!_

_Hey MJ!_

_Hey MJ!_

“Turn it off, FRIDAY,” Steve says softly, his eyes on MJ while everyone else is still chuckling over Peter’s video messages. She wipes her eyes before the rest can see, but offers Steve a weak smile in thanks. She’s not about to be the guy to take this away from Peter’s team, but it’s kind of killing her inside. All the messages she’ll never get. All the love she tried to convince herself she didn’t want. It’s just gone. Poof. 

Natasha is the first to stand. “I’m going to see about dinner,” she says, looking the most human she ever has in yoga pants and an oversized t-shirt; she crosses toward the door on silent bare feet. “Everyone _will_ be eating. We’ve been in limbo long enough. It’s time to get back to being alive.” She's gone before anyone has the energy to argue. 

“She’s just as warm and chipper as ever,” Tony remarks, getting up to pace the length of the wide wall of windows. “Missed that.”

“Living underground for a year and a half will do that to a person.” 

Steve and Tony exchange a long, cold look.

“This is weird,” MJ interrupts before anyone else can add to the creepy tension filling the room with poisonous gas. She leans down to slip on her shoes. “I’m going to find May before your big heads blow the ceiling.”

It’s cool and dark in the hallway, removed from the endless windows magnifying the last of the day’s sunlight. She’s sure May’s in her bedroom, but was really only using her as an excuse to get out of there before shit got real. The last thing she wants is to get caught in the crossfire when, like, Civil War Round 2 breaks out. It's tempting to advise Natasha to bring a ruler with her when she goes back to the living room, but that might be a little overkill.

The facility’s so much _bigger_ than it looks from the outside. She’s only been here twice and each time in different wings seemingly miles away from each other. If she weren’t distracted by the videos of Peter running through her head it might have occurred to her to wander some more, maybe find the labs or the library Peter told her about that one time. Instead she just kind of paces up and down the same side corridor a few times to try and settle her mind.

It's weird, she realizes, because she knows how the Sokovian Accords went down from the news coverage, and now she’s seeing the real people who got into actual near-death fist fights over it. She obviously knows who was on each side of the Accords because it was all over the news, but not really _why_. Well, she knows why _Steve_ was on his side; the government wanted to kill his secret boyfriend.

“MJ?”

She turns around quickly, feeling caught doing nothing at all. It’s May, standing at the end of the hall. There’s a blanket around her shoulders, tear-soaked eyes magnified by her thick glasses; the whole combination makes her look very tiny and frail and huggable. 

So MJ does just that, walking purposefully to the end of the hall and wrapping the older woman up in her arms. “I think there’s food coming,” she says instead of what she wants to say, _I’m so fucking sorry_ and _You deserved better than this_. May gives her a squeeze that envelopes them both in the blanket, her cheek warm and sticky against MJ’s. “What’re you gonna do now?”

Sniffling, May leans back to look into her eyes. A weak smile forms on her lips, but only for a second, like it’s too much effort to keep up. “I wanted to talk to you about that, actually,” she says, reaching up to pat MJ’s cheek. “Can you come with me to my room for a few minutes? I don't want anyone to overhear.”

And for some reason that just fills her with a bucketload of trepidation, as if she’s being asked to go to the principal’s office—which has never happened before, so really, she has both less and more reason to be nervous about getting in trouble, because the first time is always the worst. She doesn’t even know what to expect in this case. Clearly she hasn’t done anything to piss May off—unless May didn’t want her showing everyone Peter’s videos, but they were hers to begin with, he sent them to her, they’re her property. So maybe not that, but something else?

The door closes behind them, and May ushers her over to sit on the edge of the bed. She must notice MJ’s face, because she starts with a hasty: “You aren’t in trouble!” and she lets out the breath she didn’t know she was holding.

“No, no, honey, you aren’t in any trouble,” May repeats, taking one of her hands between both of her own. “It’s nothing like that, just. I’ve just been. Listen, MJ, I want to talk to you about something a little, a little _personal_ , I guess? If personal’s the right word? I don’t really know, but, anyway…” She gnaws on her lower lip for a few moments, like she's the one who feels like she’s going to be in trouble if she says what she’s thinking. She never takes her eyes off MJ, though.

“The thing is—“ she starts and stops with another squeeze to MJ’s hand. Letting out her sigh in an incredulous little tut of laughter, she shakes her head. “I’m sorry, this is just. I didn’t know if. Okay.”

This is getting to be too much. “You planning on finishing any of those sentences?” MJ asks gently.

“ _Yes_ , I do,” May insists, and takes a deep, bracing breath. “Okay, the thing is, MJ, that I’ve been. I’ve been thinking about this, so I don’t want you to think that I’m making any kind of, of…irrational, knee-jerk decisions. Ever since I called you, the day after the…that’s how long I’ve been thinking about it, because I sort of suspected, you know? You sounded so scared. So, okay, the thing is, that I, uh…with _your permission_ , obviously…and it would take a _lot_ of research, of course, I don’t really know how any of it works since Ben handled, but, well. I would, um. I’d like to appeal the county to-to become your legal guardian.”

MJ feels like she’s been punched in the face.

“If that’s, you know, if that’s alright with _you_ ,” May finishes with one shoulder cocked so far it brushes the bottom of her earlobe. “It just, you know, you’re still a minor, and even with h-half the population…it still can’t be easy to be put into foster care if you—do you have relatives? Because if you have any aunts or uncles or-or grandparents, I would make sure you got to them safely, too, of _course_ I would!”

It takes a long few moments before MJ realizes that May’s waiting for her to reply. “I-I don’t,” she blurts out, the blood rushing to and from her face so fast she must look like a flashing radio tower. “Have any relatives, I mean. It’s just me.”

May nods, clearly thinking hard by the furrow in her brow. “Okay,” she says. “Well. Like I said, it’s up to you, but…well, okay, I just. I need you to know first, before you say anything, that. That I’m not.” Her eyes get big and shiny behind her glasses again, and she sniffles. “I don’t want to replace your parents, honey. I promise you, I _don’t_. You’re just about grown up now, they did all the hard work, I just figure, you know…I’d do your folks a favor and...finish the job, see you through to college, just… _be here_ for you, when you need someone to. To be here for you. Are you okay, honey? Is it too much to think about right now?”

Looking down, she realizes that she’s clutching May’s hand in a white-knuckled grip and shaking. This whole time she’s been telling herself she’s alone, that no one cares about her, figuring she’s going to stay alone for the rest of her life because it’s easier than waiting to lose a spouse and children in the next universe-killing snap. But someone wants her. May should be just as pissed off and dejected as her, but instead she’s a fucking angel putting aside her grief to bring MJ into her fold.

What the fuck has she done to deserve this?

There are tears blurring her eyes; she reaches up to wipe them away with the back of her free hand. “I think that’d be okay with me,” she says through a voice thick with crying-mucus, sniffling so hard she can feel it in her throat. 

It won’t be the same. It won’t _feel_ the same, because it won’t be Mom and Dad and Tabby. But that’s okay, because May _knows_ it won’t feel the same. She doesn’t want to force it to feel the same, she just wants to give her a place to live and feel safe for a few years until she can be on her own. Like an endangered species habitat or something, but in a nice way where she isn’t doing it just to show off the token black girl she adopted to her WASPy friends for praise. It’s real, because May’s a good person.

May wraps both arms around her in a ferociously tight hug, and MJ’s pretty sure if she were ten inches shorter she would be in May’s lap right now getting rocked like a baby. It’s kind of weird, how it’s not weird at all.

“I loved Peter,” she says into May’s shoulder. “None of us deserved him.”

Laughing and hiccuping a sob at the same time, May strokes the back of her neck since her hair’s pulled up. “No, we didn’t,” she agrees. “But it was still pretty great having him around, wasn’t it?" MJ nods, damp cheek sticking to May's shirt, because she's trying to laugh too but she’s really just crying still. It’s going to stay with her forever, missing Mom and Dad and Tabby and Peter, and it hurts, but there’s a little bit of relief in her tears, too, knowing she won’t be as alone as she thought. 

They sit that way for a long time in silence. Then, tastefully discreet speakers installed in the ceiling above their heads chime softly. _I don’t mean to be a bother_ , says a sweet Irish-accented voice MJ hasn’t heard before. The AI? — _but dinner is being served in the kitchen, and I've been instructed to make sure all personnel are present. Hurry along now, loves. Follow the yellow line and you'll be there in no time._

MJ turns around to see a strip of the seamless floors illuminated yellow, like the guides on hospital floors but more hi-tech, and starts hastily trying to clean herself up again, which turns into May trying to help, which turns into the both of them laughing quietly as they wipe tears from one another’s faces. 

This, she resolves as she and May walk hand-in-hand toward the kitchen, is her family now. Little and broken but still alive. It won’t stop hurting any time this century, but it’s a good place to start.

The Avengers and, yes, even the building’s few remaining personnel, are all gathered in the spacious kitchen, some of the staff looking confused and embarrassed as they brush shoulders with Earth’s mightiest heroes. Chinese takeout is stacked four boxes high on the serving table, plates and cutlery strewn everywhere there’s available space. Natasha and Steve open the paper boxes and dish everyone up with cafeteria-sized serving spoons, heaping piles of rice and vegetables and, after checking preference and dietary restrictions first, meats smothered in sodium-rich sauces sprinkled with green onions. May passes her a bowl of white rice stacked high with General Tso’s chicken, her favorite, the spicy steam stinging her eyes as they find a place to sit.

Chatter bounces off the metal appliances’ faces as everyone settles down at various countertops and work surfaces with their meals. Things are still pretty separate, the personnel not daring to mingle with Avengers and Avengers trying not to intimidate anyone while licking their own wounds at the same time, but it’s still a pretty cool gesture. 

MJ's first bite of hot food in a week is like, it’s like, _amazing_. Her mouth start flooding with saliva because she hadn’t realized how _hungry_ she was, so busy being miserable. Maybe this is why people always bring food to the bereaved; it’s a resuscitative force. It feels like her organs just started working for the first time since the event.

As she eats, feeling better by the minute, MJ starts thinking about the project that budded to life in her mind two hours ago. She’ll have to approach the Avengers and maybe some of the personnel, too, for stories about Peter so she can write, like, something _better_ than an obituary but she can’t think of the word right now. An op-ed memorial on the Spider-Man of Queens. It would be a good thing, to tell the world—or, okay, maybe just the school paper—about the people who died trying to save them all, even if they did lose in the end.

“Whatcha thinking about?” May asks, catching sight of her contemplative face.

She glances up, chewing slower now that she’s inhaled half her bowl of food. “The future.”

May beams. They lean a little closer to one another, watching the comfortable, happy mayhem around them. Maybe their place in this world isn’t certain anymore without Peter, but they definitely don’t feel unwelcome with Thor passing around a plate of egg rolls and Clint picking projectile rice out of his hair.

Then the speakers crackle and jump and blare an alarm. 

_Atmosphere breached,_ the AI’s voice says calmly. _Incoming alien vessel, arrival: imminent. All personnel please report for duty immediately._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry not sorry for the cliffhanger!! I finally know how I'm going to end this fic, I think, and it'll be within one or two chapters. I won't say whether or not it'll be a HAPPY ending, but it'll be an ending for sure.
> 
> Thanks everyone for sticking with me through this emotional trainwreck!


	5. Chapter 5

“Go to your rooms and lock yourselves in, _now_ ,” Steve says to MJ and May as people start swarming to get out of the kitchen and man their, what, battle stations? Is this it, the big one?

MJ’s heart is in her throat as she and May stagger to their feet, common sense telling them to find a polite place to put their bowls in their guts. But Tony drops down a holographic screen to see what’s coming and Thor blurts out, “That’s a Kree battleship! They’re savages, they'll kill everyone!” and suddenly being polite in the face of imminent death doesn’t seem to matter anymore.

They must have known, she thinks as she and May careen down the halls toward May’s bedroom, they must have known that Thanos’ attack weakened Earth’s defenses and that they were all sitting ducks ripe for overthrowing. Their fast-walk turns into a run as they pass an air control employee sobbing on the phone to her husband _Something bad is happening okay take the kids to my parents’ house they have the bunker you’ll be safer there if they_ —

“We’re going to die,” MJ says, the breath barely passing through her fear-constricted throat. “Oh my _god_ , we’re going to be invaded and enslaved by hostile aliens and _die_.”

“Stop that.” May pulls the bedroom door closed behind them and pushes an armchair up against it for good—but futile, MJ thinks—measure. “It’s going to be _fine_. It’s only one ship, right? Maybe it’s some kind of, like, ambassador outreach after everything. We’ll watch from the window, right here. Natasha told me the glass is enforced against missiles, we’ll be safe to watch and see what happens.”

_And what, kill ourselves if whatever comes out of that ship decimates the Avengers?_

She’s barely breathing, shaking hands clenched at her sides as she presses her nose to the window’s reinforced glass. There’s only a small dot visible in the sky, armed Avengers and emergency personnel rushing onto the back lawn, already marred by Tony's arrival, to prepare for the worst case scenario on landing. The glass fogs under her scant breath and the heat of her fear-flushed skin. May crowds close with an arm around her shoulders, the both of them trembling as they wait for their imminent demise.

The ship's coming in fast, no longer a dot but smaller than it originally looked when it was in the sky. It hits the turf with a _thud_ that shakes the building. May lets out a small involuntary sound of fear as they both clutch each other like security blankets in the dark.

Trying to take in as much information as possible, MJ watches the Avengers’ body language for clues about what's coming. Natasha’s wearing a radio headset, but her back is to MJ so it’s impossible to tell if she’s trying to communicate with the Kree invaders or waiting for more information from the facility. Steve has his old shield back, clutched tight in his left hand, and Thor his new (and really kinda sexy) battle axe, their heads aimed upward, watchful. Clint has his bow and Tony’s in his suit. They’re ready to do battle.

Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god oh god. They’re all going to die. This is how it happens. MJ starts to fervently hope that there’s an afterlife where her family are waiting for her, because if not then all this bullshit _was not worth it_.

The craft door shudders and swings open with a dull clang of metal that MJ can barely hear through the window, or maybe she’s just imagining it on seeing it shake. Flashing lights and a hulking figure are veiled by the thin smoke that rolls from the opening. May’s hands tighten on her arm, fingernails uncomfortably digging in, but she barely notices as the smoke starts to clear. It’s not one figure, but two smaller ones leaning on one another, shambling out of the craft.

Thor drops his battle axe. The ground shakes again under its impact as he starts to run toward the ship. MJ sucks in a breath; she can’t tell if he’s happy or enraged until he seizes one of them—they’re two women, she can see now—and embraces her. And actually kisses her.

“ _What_ the-?” May mutters. They both rush to remove the armchair obstructing the door and get out. Personnel are wandering into the corridor in similar confusion at this turn of events. Some of them call out to one another, others just flock to the ends of the corridor where there are more windows in the stairwells.MJ and May shove past them and out the exit, because they might as well get a front seat if they’re about to be annihilated by, like, a succubus or whatever’s making out with Thor.

Night is blurring everyone’s features as they come to a staggering stop shoulder-to-shoulder with the Avengers, who seem just as confused as everyone inside by Thor’s sudden shift in attitude toward the alleged savages on the lawn. 

He’s disengaged from the woman he was kissing and turned to the team, beaming with tears rolling from his eyes as he brings her forward. Shorter than MJ but powerfully built, wearing a white and silver armored bodysuit, her long hair a tangled knot on the back of her head.

“My friends,” Thor says breathlessly, gripping the woman’s hand tightly, “this is Brünnhilde. Asgard’s fiercest warrior, the last of the Valkyrior.”

A _Valkyrie_. MJ remembers reading a children's book on Norse mythology when she was a little kid and thinking the Valkyrior were _so cool_ , stroking sticky fingers over pictures of beautiful blonde and redheaded women warriors, wishing she could be more like them. Then Mom caught her crying over it; they had to have a talk about black excellence and she donated the book to a charity shop a few weeks later, completely forgot about it until now. But this woman is different in, like, the coolest way possible, because _she looks like MJ_. It knocks the air right out of her chest.

The other woman hangs back only slightly, calculating dark eyes racing across the assembled Avengers' faces. Her armor is green and gray with a star on the front, disheveled blonde hair swept back over one shoulder. She crosses her arms defensively when she notices MJ looking at her.

“I went in search of Mar-Vell when you sent me in the escape vessel,” the Valkyrie explains, eyes only on Thor. “He’s a powerful soldier, but he was defeated in battle years ago. _This_ is the warrior Carol Danvers, who took his place. I _like_ her,” she adds as an aside, and the blonde grins.

Before Danvers can say anything, however, Tony’s faceplate pops open with a hiss of hydraulics. “Hang on,” he blurts out, taking a step toward the woman. He shines a light from his suit into her direction. “ _Carol_ _Danvers?_ Rhodey’s annoyingly competent flight school girlfriend, Carol Danvers?”

Her head turns at the sound of Tony’s voice. A previously stoic face slackens with surprise, lips parting and eyebrows shooting up behind her fringe of hair. “Tony Stark,” she says slowly, not looking totally thrilled to see him. “Jim’s obnoxiously immature college roommate. No offense, but I honestly did not think you’d live past thirty.”

“No offense, but I thought you’d look a lot worse for being well past _your_ thirties.”

“ _Children_ ,” Natasha interrupts, glaring between the two of them. “Is it really the time or place to be doing this? Since I’m assuming you aren’t here to take over the planet, we might want to table the discussion for inside.” She turns to lead the way into the building and seems to notice MJ and May for the first time. “—oh. Come on, _everyone_ , inside. May, Michelle, it’s getting pretty late, isn’t it?”

Superhero business only, apparently. Seems a little unfair, but MJ figures since she’s actually incapable of contributing to any world-saving other than writing a scathing op-ed piece about the outcome, maybe they’re right. It might be different if Peter was still here, but, well. He isn’t.

It makes her feel weirdly helpless, knowing that she has no say anymore. Even when Spider-Man was her boyfriend her sphere of influence could only really encompass and sway _him_ , but at least he had listened to her a little bit before doing something stupid. She’s just a know-it-all teenager to the adults, which, have they ever considered maybe they _need_ the input of someone other than themselves? If not her, then literally any other civilian. They're just going to trust this random space woman, though? Just because Thor’s new girlfriend likes her and Tony used to know her doesn’t mean she couldn’t be a double agent or one of the Kree mentioned earlier anyway.

Maybe she’s just sulking. Looking for a reason to feel bad for herself because she isn’t included. Whatever, she’ll just get started on her new project memorializing Spider-Man, but that means going to the kitchen to get her bag back from where Clint stashed it. Bracing herself for a reprimand if her lurking is mistaken for snooping, she ducks into the hall.

There are voices coming from inside the kitchen, along with the chiming of cutlery. Of course, the Valkyrie and Carol Danvers must be wrecked after barreling through space in that tiny spacecraft. MJ deliberates the merit of coming back later or barging in because, hey, it’s a public space, and they should wait to discuss confidential stuff until they’re in private, but Danvers’s voice cuts right through her thought process and freezes her in her tracks.

“...sure that I can,” she’s saying, voice slightly muffled like she has rice tucked into her cheek while she talks. “I don’t mean to sound cocky, but I’ve moved entire _planets_ before. If we can get the drop on Thanos, removing the gauntlet shouldn’t be an issue. After he’s dispatched I’ll put it on and—”

Six voices swell in simultaneous protest, cutting her off. “And just what makes you think _you_ should have that kind of power, Space Princess Barbie?” Tony demands. “Getting the Kree Eye makeover doesn’t exactly make you an intergalactic authority.”

“I’m not going to use the gauntlet to rule the galaxy,” Danvers retorts, sounding almost bored with Tony’s assumptions about her. “It can alter time and reality, right? So I’m going to use it to go back in time and prevent the snap.”

MJ’s heart thuds painfully in her chest, her back pressed right against the wall outside the kitchen door because her knees have suddenly turned to jelly. Is this for real? Is it possible, or is Danvers full of what her dad used to call _shit and shinola?_ Can she really survive the power of that stupid gauntlet without going power crazy?

Can she bring everyone back?

The small audience in the kitchen are just as stunned by the casual statement of her plans, all sounds of life gone as they let her words sink in.

“Bullshit,” Clint finally says. “We don’t even know how to find Thanos, and you think you can kill the big purple bastard and undo erasing half the world’s population?”

“It wasn’t just the world,” the Valkyrie, MJ’s already forgotten her real name, says tightly. “It was the entire galaxy. You think it isn’t even worth _trying_ to reverse that damage?”

Another long pause. Then Tony speaks up: “What the hell, why not? Life as we know it is already over, may as well gamble on the full monty. But that still leaves us in a hole if we don’t know where to find Thanos to catch him by surprise, if he even can be surprised now that he has the Michael Jackson Glove of Mass Destruction.”

A bottle hisses and pops open, giving way to the smell of hops that used to haunt MJ’s childhood days. “ _We have the technology_ ,” Danvers says ominously, but with a grin in her voice. “I grabbed some Kree tech on my way out, as much as I could get my hands on. Cloaking devices and more advanced trackers than you’ve ever even dreamed of. Feel like playing, Stark?”

Another bottle cracks open, and clinks against the first. “We may get along after all,” Tony says. “Bruce, let’s hit it.”

“We’ll start strategizing an ambush plan,” Steve says, his voice thrumming with purpose for the first time since MJ and May rolled up this morning. “Or—it’s getting late. Maybe we should get some rest and start first thing tomorrow morning.”

Before the scientists can protest, Natasha speaks up. “He’s right,” she says firmly. “Getting into this on how little sleep we’ve all been getting will only lead to mistakes we can't afford. Captain Danvers and Brünnhilde have come a long way, too, and must be exhausted. We’ll reconvene in the morning, and FRIDAY _will_ tell me if anyone is in the lab overnight, Tony, Bruce.”

Tony’s voice rises in argument, but MJ flees before they can decide one way or another on the matter. She’ll come back for her bag in the morning and write on her phone for now.

She feels dazed as she walks back to her room, doesn’t want to tell May. Not yet, when things are still uncertain. Knowing that there’s even a tentative plan makes her heart race, both a talisman and a burden, and if these are truly mankind’s final hours she doesn’t want to heft that same burden onto May’s shoulders. An uneasy peace settled over the facility at the closure of finally knowing Peter died and Tony lived, and she isn’t sure she wants to be the one to break that. She wants the illusion of safety, of surety, but if she can’t have it then maybe she can give it to someone else.

Settling on the edge of her borrowed bed, she takes the time to appreciate being alive while she can. Maybe it’s a terrible thing to survive without her family, but there’s a shattered kind of beauty in surviving at all. It’s a pretty positive outlook, considering that only two days ago she was ready to flip a coin on whether living was even worth it anymore.

MJ lays flat on her back, hands crossed over her sodium-bloated stomach, and closes her eyes to try and sleep, unaware of the real plans being made in the kitchen now that there are no prying teenage ears to eavesdrop.

* * *

“You _have_ to be joking,” Ned says as they approach the front steps leading into school. “Everyone and their stupid brother has heard of a wet willy!”

MJ screams, body reacting as if under attack, and as her butt hits the pavement she sees Ned’s finger outstretched and glistening with spit, exactly where her ear had just been. His eyes go round and Peter quickly closes the gap between where he’s standing and she’s lying sprawled on the ground. 

“Are you okay?” he asks, all sincerity and concern and _alive_.

Ned givers anxiously over his shoulder. “I am _so sorry_ , MJ! I didn’t think you’d jump like that; but at least you weren’t all the way up the steps yet? Then you could have, like, _died_.”

It takes everything in her not to scream again, staring slack-jawed between the boys in front of her eyes and the crowd of students milling into school like any other day, paying no attention to their little tableau. “What-?” she stammers, palms stinging as she brings them up to her face. There are bits of gravel stuck to her skin but no blood, no twisted ankle, but it’s the same _RESIST_ t-shirt she was wearing that day, the day of the invasion. Peter and Ned, too, look exactly as she remembers, totally unremarkable except that it’s the last time she’ll ever see them.

It’s happening again. 

Peter puts a worried hand on her shoulder, crouched easily by her side. “Did you hit your head?” he asks meekly, scared by the naked horror in her own expression. Does he not remember?

Then she sees a few other bodies in the current of students stagger and pause, look around in confusion and a little bit of fear. Cindy Moon locks eyes with MJ, her own wide and filled with tears. Her mouth forms the words _What happened?_

She shakes her head, reaching out with shaking hands to touch Peter. Is it a trick, Thanos playing a sick game with the few who remained behind? His arm is warm and solid beneath her own, the corners of his eyes creased with worry as he slowly pulls her to her feet, as easily as if she’s a feather pillow instead of an inch taller than him. “I mean this in the nicest way possible,” he says slowly, “but you’re acting really weird a of a sudden, MJ.” He actually reaches up to feel her forehead, but she slaps his hand away.

“Stop that,” she says, unable to keep her gaze from the crowd of students, watching all their faces, their tears as they suddenly stop to embrace similarly confused and concerned classmates who must have died in what Carol called the snap.

Carol!

“She did it,” MJ breathes out, feeling lightheaded and a little delirious. She grabs Peter’s stupid worried face between her hands and shakes him. “She did it! I went to sleep and she fixed it, it’s over!”

“What’s-?” Ned starts, but she released Peter to body-slam him into a hug so fast he screams, thinking she’s getting revenge for the wet willy, but no, it’s Ned, she loves him even if he did try to stick a spitty finger in her ear, and soon enough he gives her a bear hug like the one she’s been missing for over a week, god, has it only been a week?

Tears roll down her face as she releases him; she must look insane. “It’s okay you don’t remember, you were dead,” she babbles, trying to explain but only making it worse judging by their faces. “But now you’re not, you’re back, it’s all the same again, she must have done it, she did it, it’s _done_.”

If anything, Peter looks less assured than ever by her tirade. He puts his hands placatingly up like he’s facing off a rabid ferret, unaware of the rest of the student body having the exact same interaction behind him. “MJ, maybe you should skip the field trip,” he says slowly. “You don’t look too good, MJ. Maybe we should go to the nurse, MJ.”

“Stop saying my name like you’re trying to talk down a bank robber.” But she isn’t even angry, really, just pulls him in for another hug. 

She practically feels the hairs raise on the back of his neck when he finally tunes in to the mass hysteria occurring all across the courtyard. “What the hell’s going on?” he asks, hands tightening on her arms as he searches for a threat behind every bush.

“Oh my god, I have to call my dad,” she realizes, practically shoving Peter away ashes digs for her phone in her bag. She’s crying again, hands shaking and fumbling with the phone as Ned tries to gently wrest it from her and get more answers than she’s capable of giving right now. “Ned, stop, stop! I have to call my dad, Tabby’s alive, she’s alive, I have to talk to her!”

“Why wouldn’t she be alive?” Ned asks with a frown. 

He’s not getting it, none of them are, and now Principal Morita is rushing out the main entrance looking like he’s seeing a hundred ghosts all at once. After shaking his head like a wet dog he dives into the knots of students, trying to calm down the hysteria spreading like wildfire. Kids who were calm and normal five minutes ago are now freaking out along with their friends, scared that something they aren’t privy to is going down unseen. The school nurse comes next, checking temperatures left and right, throwing the thermometer’s protective covers to the ground like a sharpshooter spewing bullet casings before reloading. A few people are hyperventilating, faculty running out of the school with paper bags clutched in their fists, some of them sobbing even as they try to bring comfort where it can be given. MJ clutches Ned’s hand and watches; this isn’t how it should be happening.

A piercing whistle splits the air in two, snapping enough kids out of their own heads to stop the screaming. Morita stands breathless at the epicenter, withdrawing his fingers from his lips.

“ _Everyone inside and report to the gymnasium!_ ” he hollers to be heard in every corner of the courtyard. “Sit on the bleachers with your homeroom classmates. Until we figure out what’s going on, there will be no school activities today. Attendance will be taken, but parents will be called for anyone feeling too...unwell, to go on with classes for the day. That is all.” Looking pale and a little sick, he fast-walks inside, probably to make the same announcement over the intercom for everyone who got in earlier.

Clutching Peter’s hand in one of hers and Ned’s in the other, she tugs them behind her into the school. She tries to remember what time Thanos’s ship appeared in the sky last time, it was maybe 45 minutes after the nurse wrapped her ankle and left her to lie down until Dad came. If it’s all really fixed, then in, like, an hour nothing will have happened. Just one hour to know if the world, the galaxy, is really saved.

Approximately no one sits with their appropriate homeroom class, unless they share a homeroom with their best friends. With matching whispered questions in her ears she sits them down on the very top riser, tucked away into a corner. She clutches Peter and Ned’s hands on either side of her in a white-knuckled grip. How can she explain this to them? How can anyone? They're about to be invaded by a hostile alien force, she knows about it, and her only reasoning behind it is that it already happened but a woman from outer space was brought in to save the day, and may or may not have found a way to time-travel.

Maybe she really has gone nuts.

A lot of nothing happens while MJ tries to figure out if Carol’s plan really worked. The teachers cluster in the center of the gym for a frenetic conversation, split apart to get unruly students to sit down, then cluster again. It’s getting steamy from the entire student body’s joined heat; the AC doesn’t get switched on until the first week of May. The distinctive dew of stress-sweat is forming under MJ’s boobs. 

She once compared tripping and landing on Steve Rogers as wrestling with a mattress full of soap. Trying to dig her fingers into Peter’s arm is like trying to dig her fingers into a tree branch, his muscles are so tense.

“Hey, relax a little,” he tries to tell her despite this, but closely examines her face. “…do you know what’s going on?”

Then she really does feel the fine baby hairs on his arm all rise at once like grass growing in a time-lapse video, and a second later someone whispers, _did you hear that?_

Principal Morita ducks his head to better hear the radio at his ear and hurries out of the gym. 

It’s happening. Thanos is here.

“Nonononononono,” she whispers, fingers digging deeper into Peter’s arm as he starts to rise. “Peter, don’t. _Don’t go_ , Peter, I swear to _God_ I will sell your underwear on the deep web, _please_ —”

“I think it's something bad,” Peter argues in a more heated whisper, his brows furrows and eyes wide with worry. “MJ, you _know_ I have to go. The world might be in danger, it’s my responsibility to help if the Avengers need me.”

“Let them _call you_ if they need you.”

“ _MJ_.” He pries his arm from her grip with gentle but obvious ease. “Come on. You promised you wouldn’t…I _have_ to go. Okay? Please don’t be mad. Ned, call Karen if you can get to a computer.”

On her other side, Ned nods somberly. “Will do, buddy. Be careful.”

Then he’s gone and traipsing down the risers with exaggerated care, always pretending to still be the clumsy loser he was before the spider bite. MJ’s eyes stick to his back as he stops to talk with Principal Morita with one hand on his stomach and a grimace. She can practically hear him coming up with an excuse. 

_Please, Principal Morita, I’m really freaked out, my stomach hurts, I think I might puke, can I just go to the bathroom really quick? I’ll be right back, I promise…_

Morita nods and he runs for the exit. She puts her head down on Ned’s shoulder and wills herself not to start bawling. It might turn out differently this time. It might work. It has to work, because it’s not just her family and boyfriend at risk, looking around at her frightened classmates she finally understands that it’s everyone’s families and everyone’s boyfriends. Or, okay, she understood it all along, but now has the brain capacity to give a shit.

“He’s gonna be okay,” Ned tries to assure her after a minute, putting an arm around her shoulders. “He always is, right? Don’t worry, M, it’ll all be good.” The quaver in his voice gives him away, though. They’re all afraid, but only half of them knows why.

The student body is moved to the hallways again, just like last—this?—time. Instead of huddling next to Cindy with a sprained ankle she huddles next to Ned and makes him hug her just in case it’s the last time again. They sit for a few hours, long after her butt has gone numb, before the all-clear is called and they’re allowed to go home. MJ checks her phone for messages from Peter: nothing. But then there’s a silver lining. 

Dad’s out there. Not accidentally at the front of the crowd, but sunk into the middle of the parental mob waiting in the courtyard. Tabby’s on his hip, too, which helps MJ spot him, at least until she’s blinded by tears. She just runs and trusts that people she isn’t related to will get the fuck out of the way so Dad can catch her. His arms are solid and warm and real, he’s alive and here and hugging her and asking _Hey, hey, MJ, what’s wrong, honey? Oh, god, it’s okay! It’s going to be okay! Take a breath, sweetheart, we’re okay, we’re_ …

He makes a small, pained sound. Tabby starts to say her name.

MJ screams as they turn to dust in her arms.

* * *

“You _have_ to be joking,” Ned says as they approach the front steps leading into school. “Everyone and their stupid—”

MJ ducks to circumvent his reaching, spitty finger, clenching his wrist in a crushing grip until Ned yelps in pain. "I have to go,” she gasps and starts to sob even harder than she did a few days ago (a few days from now?) at the kitchen table with May Parker, knees buckling beneath her weight as Peter and Ned both flail to catch her before she cracks her skull on Midtown’s front steps. “I have to go home, I…I… _I need my sister, she’s going to die!_ ”

The hysteria spreads like wildfire this time, even faster and more severe than before. Principal Morita doesn’t even show up in the courtyard, bewildered nurses and faculty trying to take charge in a hopeless situation. Cars in the street come to a screeching halt as they witness what probably looks like a school shooting in progress. Sirens of police cars and ambulances approach, then spread into a deafening roar as every unit in New York is dispatched to similar scenes across the city, across the country, the world. The galaxy is trapped in Purgatory. Or Groundhog Day, but both options seem pretty grim from the outside looking in.

No one even makes it into the school, the hysterical urged to sit on the sidewalk and damp grass before they pass out. Ned and Peter have to carry MJ between them to a safe place, but Ned’s being rapidly sucked in by the general mood and breathing hard.

“MJ, MJ, MJ, Tabby’s safe!" Peter has to yell to be heard over all the screaming and crying. “You sent me a Snapchat video of her this morning, remember? It’s okay, you’re okay!”

She is not okay, but thanks for mansplaining, Parker. The entire galaxy is either about to be wiped out or she’s going to have to explain the meltdown of all meltdowns to her two very skittish best friends. Or maybe just Peter. Ned’s spiraling into a panic of his own.

“Why are we screaming? What happened? _What happened?!_ ” he’s yelling and crying and searching for his phone, probably to call his mom.

Sticky tears track down her face as Peter wraps his arms around her and holds her close like he can crush the terror from her bones. She can feel his heart pounding as she settles against his chest, clinging to him and trying not to scream right along with everyone else. Because it’s going to happen again. He’s going to die soon and there’s nothing she can do to stop it, just watch it all go down.

Parents start rolling up in a herd of cars, some of them driving right onto the lawn to get to their kids faster. Peter’s wrenched away from her by his aunt, who grips him tight and rocks him like a baby in her arms, howling with anticipated grief. The horror in Peter’s face is a knife to her heart, even as she scans the courtyard for a sign of Dad, any sign at all, please, the flash of his red-blond hair in the sun, the sound of Tabby’s voice, his car with the stupid _My Other Car Is My Running Shoes_ bumper sticker, please, anything, just for a second before the next snap, something to remember him by.

They don’t come. Peter doesn’t leave. Slowly, MJ’s tears abate into a terrified numbness. Dad didn’t work today, he should be here with Tabby. Nothing would have stopped him from getting here once he knew there was an emergency. May and Peter wait with her as she calls and calls and calls, and finally Mom stumbles out of a cab, pale and mentally checked out but alive, she’s alive, she’s a few hours late but she’s here.

“Mama," she sobs anew, burying her face in Mom's shoulder even though she’s four inches taller than her. “Mama, what happened? Where’s Dad and T-Tabby?” _Please, Mom, please, banish the monster from under my bed, make it all better because I don’t want the reality_.

“There was an accident,” Mom says softly into MJ’s hair. “They’re…” She gasps, hand clenching at the nape of MJ’s neck so hard a few hairs are yanked out, and is gone.

* * *

The invasion lasts five days, then moves to somewhere unseen in the cosmos, and everyone still dies.

* * *

The next attempt starts a month before the invasion, the day before Peter is supposed to ask MJ to go to prom with him. She says no and won’t speak to him. Tries to shut him out. He’s understandably hurt, won’t leave her alone for a week before she accuses him of stalking her. The day before the invasion is supposed to happen, she has a breakdown in the middle of Physics lab and throws a four thousand dollar microscope out the window because nothing really matters anyway. She's sitting in a disciplinary hearing when the judge turns to dust.

* * *

A year and some change before the invasion. Mom and Dad and Tabby sing to her on her sixteenth birthday. Tears roll down her face as she blows out the candles, swearing to commit this moment to her memory while she ticks down the days until their deaths.

* * *

She’s seven years old, and she wakes up screaming about aliens killing everyone. Mom hugs her close, _shh, shh, shh, baby_ , strokes her hair, and promises that nothing bad like that will ever, ever happen. It can’t possibly happen. _There’s no such thing as aliens, honey, they’re just pretend, like the characters in your books._

_Thanos won’t have the Tessaract for years_ , she concludes an hour later, sandwiched between Mom and Dad in bed, _they can kill him now_. She wonders what a _Thanos_ is. Her little mind can’t wrap around it all.

* * *

Half the people around the world are born with anxiety disorders, though it’s written off as fussy babies until they’re old enough to diagnose or brush off as unreasonable. Michelle Jones is one of the lucky ones who gets treatment early, in counseling from the moment she can communicate her fears. It’s a worldwide phenomenon, given a different name by every psychologist to try and tackle it. Billions of mentally ill people under the same delusion that one day the healthy will turn to dust.

Some specialists theorize that half of the world never developed a sense of object permanence, so when the people they love leave a room the afflicted are convinced they're gone forever. One day it’s caused by a prenatal virus, the next toxic rain born from a polluted ocean.

By the time she’s old enough to start calling herself MJ, there are decades-old cults dedicated to a God who will someday cleanse the earth of the wicked and leave the misdiagnosed behind. It brings her some comfort, for a time, when she joins with one of them in college, but that comfort is short-lived and she returns home penniless with no clothes other than cheap white dresses. 

She meets Peter Parker when she’s thirty years old and finally back on track. He’s married to her best friend from the office, Gwen Stacy. She gets drunk and Peter and Gwen’s fifth anniversary party and tells the enthralled partygoers that she used to know the future but something else happened instead, because she went to a public high school and Peter Parker never got to ask her to prom. “ _It’s my fault!_ ” she screams and spills half the tasteful drink cart. “ _I did it, I made everyone sick!_ ” It causes a disturbing chain reaction among other guests who have been carefully passing as normal all their adult lives, and she’s asked to leave.

On her way home, the subway shuts down because the driver disintegrated. She only has a moment to feel perfectly, blissfully, _justified_.

* * *

The wheels are put into motion long before Michelle Jones is even a thought. She and Peter meet by chance in second grade, and she tells him that someday he’s going to die. He starts crying and his uncle takes him away with a nasty look at her parents.

They reconnect in high school and laugh about it. 

They almost get to grow old together.

* * *

Everything happened as it did the first time around, and there’s a breeze dragging at her curls.

MJ opens her eyes and takes in the sprawling rear lawn of the upstate Avengers facility. A donut-shaped spaceship drifts toward the ground, and when she looks around she’s surrounded by Earth’s mightiest heroes. The original lineup, minus Tony, minus Steve. She feels exhausted but isn’t sure why, except that everyone she loves is dead.

“I’m sorry," a familiar voice says behind her. She and May and the Avengers turn around. A tallish blonde woman, haggard and rail-thin, stands swaying in the grass. On her left hand is an enormous, golden glove, glowing with gemstones MJ’s never seen before. “I was wrong. I thought I had to prevent it.”

_Carol_ , a voice in her head whispers as she takes in the dark circles around the woman’s eyes. _Carol Danvers_. 

“I have to _undo_ it.”

The gloved hand rises, either in threat or supplication MJ doesn’t know, but she feels a great sense of relief as the approaching spaceship hits a pocket of turbulence and starts to careen downward like a meteor more than a means of travel. It  bursts into flames, and at the edge of her vision, a rainbow bridge springs from the turf.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter turned out longer than I expected, but I also expect the final chapter to be fairly short as I wrap up. Anyway this was fun and very upsetting to write! Hope you had fun with the time travel shenanigans!


	6. Chapter 6

Most memories of the alternate timelines have leeched from MJ's head within moments, but there are still two very distinct versions of events, of her _life_ , active within her and causing a lot of confusion as she stands on the Avengers’ back lawn once again.

In one version, everything leading up to this moment makes a devastating kind of sense.

In the other, none of this should even exist.

The Avengers, minus Tony, minus Steve, and thanks to the rainbow bridge now minus Thor stand around her. Clint, Bruce, Natasha, their names tumble into her head as they exchange sentiments of severe mental disorientation. A Valkyrie sits in the grass with her eyes on the stars, and a strange woman named Carol Danvers stands a few yards away. Devastated relief is carved into every line on her young face. A gauntlet bereft of gemstones hits the ground, thin smoke rolling from its fingertips. Her naked hand shakes.

“Where’s…?" Natasha murmurs with a hand on her head, because she knows where Steve Rogers is, even if she also _doesn’t_ at the same time. 

It’s elementary school stuff, glossed over in history classes to avoid getting too deep or giving kids nightmares. Captain America was known around the world for his heroics during World War Two. But after his best friend (and rumored secret lover) was killed in action, he was changed by the trauma. In an act of horrific violence he single-handedly brought down all of Hydra, root and stem, by crashing one of their own planes, loaded with explosives that shouldn't have even existed yet, into their base of operations. There were no survivors, according to any school textbook, but a lot of Discovery Channel shows like to credit the total desolation of the base to aliens disguised as Norse gods abducting anyone who managed to make it out of the rubble.

What the books won’t tell them because no one knows: there was a Tessaract in the Red Skill's possession. It was found at the heart of ground zero where the nose of Steve Rogers’s wrecked plane disintegrated, the epicenter of the great explosion. The Tessaract was destroyed in the heart of a white dwarf, along with the rest of the deadly treasures in Odin’s trophy room.

Arnim Zola was already in American custody by this time, though, so in 2014 there really _was_ an attempted takeover, but the faction was so small that even their secret weapon, The Winter Soldier, wasn’t a match for SHIELD. Natasha Romanoff spoke up for Hydra’s puppet, though, after unearthing the records revealing he was actually James Barnes, and he was sent to rehabilitative care instead of executed on Capitol Hill.

It’s the stuff everyone knows, literally textbook, with evidence online and in newspaper records. But MJ remembers _meeting_ Steve Rogers, too, his self-deprecating smiles and how his fingers twitch in search of a shield when he feels helpless. How he knelt at her side when they all thought Peter was dying and asked if _she_ was okay and didn’t laugh at her when she tripped and fell on top of him because her legs had fallen asleep. That was _real_.

Bruce steps away into the nearby bushes to be discreetly sick.

“No Tessaract, no snap,” MJ realizes out loud. “He couldn’t do it without all of them on the gauntlet.”

May takes a shuddering breath and wraps both arms around her. “Does that mean…?” she starts to ask, but her voice is lost in her own tremulous emotions as she turns her head to address Carol Danvers.

Danvers doesn’t say anything, but the sudden sagging of May’s body suggests that she nodded where MJ couldn’t see. “We’ll see, if Thor comes back,” she says. “But—yeah. Everyone should still be here, unless they were killed outside of the snap.”

In her pocket, MJ’s phone starts to buzz. A sound involuntarily wrenches its way from her throat as she pulls out of May’s embrace to check the screen. Instead she drops it into the grass, but in the dark the caller ID reading _Dad_ is still clearly visible shining upward from between shadow-blackened blades. She falls to her knees and almost drops it again sliding the answer button.

“Daddy?”

“ _MJ, where are you?_ ” Dad asks frantically on the other end. He sounds somehow realer than he did yesterday, like she’s been hearing his voice from underwater. “Something...your mom and I are a little confused about...did you _go_ somewhere?”

_No_ , she thinks as her vision twists and blurs with salt-stinging tears. _You’re the one who left_. She clamps a hand tightly over her mouth to hold in either a gale of sobs or hysterical laughter, she’s not sure yet, but her whole body still shudders and shakes from the effort. But she has to breathe or choke, and her first gasping breath is released in a scary kind of sound she’s never heard herself or, like, anyone else ever make before. It’s all animal, the intersection of relief and now misplaced grief. That week without her father’s voice still sits between her ears, sinking lower and lower into her guts and condensing into a stone, a diamond-hard ball of grief and longing and _wanting_ this but knowing she’ll never have it.

But there’s another version, too, of life going on, just staying closer to home as the Avengers continued fighting Thanos across the cosmos. Of subdued dinners with her parents and little sister, watching the news too much, going more numb every time her phone buzzed and it wasn’t news from Peter. Sneaking out to meet May when there was a sign of Tony and Peter’s return and beating ass upstate.

“Oh, god,” she says, choking as she doubles over in the wet grass. Her eyes go up to the descending space-donut, burning up in the atmosphere, unable to wrap her mind around the possibility of losing Peter twice if, in this new turn of events, he’s on that ship with Tony Stark.

The Avengers seem to know this, too, but there’s literally nothing that can be done until the fire’s out.

“What’s going on?” Dad’s voice comes back, sounding more alert and concerned, to cause another vicious clenching of her heart. “Where are you, Michelle, is everything okay? Mom and I both heard you sneak out but we thought you just needed space, are you…are you safe? Where did you _go?_ ” And there goes the alert, spinning back and forming a panicked edge. Reality is—or both converging realities are—sinking in, now, and she can hear it happen in his voice. He _knows_ he died.

MJ wraps both arms around herself as facility staff finally come rolling out the exits with fire extinguishers that are probably going to be equal to a drop of water on a bonfire. She hopes to god the fire brigade is on the way, but out in the country it’ll probably take a while. Hopefully it arrives before the facility burns down, because she isn’t sure she has it in her to move until she’s saturated with her dad’s voice inside and out. “I’m safe,” she finally manages to tell him. “I’m with May Parker. We went upstate to get news about Peter. We’re still. We’re still waiting. Some stuff is happening but it’s. I’m okay. I’m okay, Dad. I’m _okay_.”

Fresh tears pool in her eyes as Dad lets out a shaky sigh of relief. “Okay. Okay, honey. I’ll buy you some time, but Mom’s starting to…we’re kind of freaking out over here. Get home as soon as you can, okay?”

“Okay, I will.”

“Okay. _I love you_ , Michelle. So, so much.”

For a few moments, she can’t speak through the lump in her throat. “Can I talk to Tabby before you go?” she chokes out. “O-only if she’s already awake, I don’t want to scare her.”

Dad doesn’t respond. There’s a shuffling sound on the other end, a _whumpf_ of air moving against the phone’s mic, and then the most perfect, beautiful, sleepy baby voice: “Em coming home?”

And just like that she’s almost crippled again. But she can hear sirens coming in the distance, so MJ knows she doesn’t have a lot of time. “Yeah, little Bug, I’m coming home soon,” she promises through the tears in her throat, trying to keep it together so Tabby won’t be scared on top of the confusion she’s probably already feeling. “You might be asleep when I get home, so I’ll just see you in the morning.”

“No, _now_ ,” Tabby argues.

“How about I wake you up when I get home instead?” MJ counters, unable to say no to that pleading little voice. “I’ll kiss you goodnight, we do cuddles for just a few minutes, and then we both go to bed.”

Tabby thinks on it for a few seconds as the sirens grow louder into a wail. By the time she makes up her mind MJ can barely hear her. “Okay, deal,” she decides in the same kind of frank concession that MJ probably used at that age, probably still uses now. She honest-to-god clutches at her nonexistent pearls as she soaks in the silvery notes of her sister's voice, her heart beating heavy with this new reality, _alive, alive, alive_.

“I gotta go,” she says now, even though the last thing she wants is to let go of this moment in case it’s snatched away again. “I love you, Bug.”

“ _Luhyoutoo_.” 

Tabby’s already falling asleep on the other end; it’s getting late. MJ doesn’t wait for Dad before ending the call. She _can’t_ wait, or she’ll never hang up and then the fire engine won’t see her in the grass and she’ll turn into nothing more than a happy little smear on the Avengers’ back lawn. Because she _is_ happy. She’s so happy it hurts down to her bones and she wants to scream until her guts fall out with it. Mom and Dad and Tabby are alive. She can get through anything as long as that remains true.

Everyone is ushered to the side of the building when the spaceship comes down with an earth-shuddering groan of metal joints that weren’t built to bend giving way. The fire fighters hook up to the facility’s emergency water line and start immediately dousing the ship with a deluge of water. MJ and May hold onto one another; the high of having her family back is already being eked away by the growing fear that Peter’s on the burning ship gnawing at her insides. It’s not even really fear for herself anymore, since at least she’ll have Mom and Dad to lean on, but for May having to go through losing him again.

There’s not much flammable material on a spaceship for obvious reasons, so the fire dies pretty quickly and the search and rescue process begins. Bystanders are encouraged to go inside and wait for news, probably in case of carnage, but no one moves. They stand and wait right there as the rubble, still ticking with that hot-metal sound, is sifted through, firefighters calling out for survivors to make themselves known any way possible. Their calls are met with silence that grows in the pit of MJ’s stomach with every passing minute.

After a perfunctory search of the exterior, the firefighters vanish inside of what remains of the structure. It’s massive, and they don’t exactly have a blueprint to go off of for where crew might be, so it takes a while. Despite the fact that they’re still scared, clenched hands start to relax as the body’s demands take over and adrenaline starts to wear off. May’s weight gets heavier against MJ’s side, but she doesn’t say anything, just leans back so they’re holding each other up. She’s braced in case Peter’s body is brought out, ready to take on all of May’s weight so she doesn’t have to take on the burden of grief _and_ of having a physical form.

But it isn’t Peter’s body that’s brought out of the rubble. It’s some whackjob-looking dude in a cape and wearing even tackier facial hair than Stark’s. He’s barely alive, and the facility’s medical team rushes him inside on a stretcher. MJ feels almost cheated. All this hype for someone she doesn’t even recognize.

The remaining Avengers have formed a tight knot off to the side, obviously trying to figure out a way to contact Thor because they’re giving the Valkyrie and Carol Danvers sidelong looks, like maybe one of them might be hiding a rainbow bridge somewhere on their persons. Both women look too defeated and weary to be hiding anything, though, even to MJ’s experienced eye.

“He’ll come back,” the Valkyrie says with confidence, somehow managing to look down her nose at the Avengers even while being several inches shorter than all but Natasha. “He’ll be searching for our people, his brother; he wouldn’t leave me here and _not_ intend to come back. I won’t let him.” The last is said with only a smidge of desperation along the edges of her voice, but she covers for it well by adding: “What have you Midgardians by way of booze around here, anyway? It’s been one hell of a week.”

Is that it? MJ wonders, starting to shiver as night falls and the spaceship’s metal sides cool and the firefighters give up the search. They’re just giving up for the night? Peter could still be out there somewhere, and if Thor’s the only one with inter-dimensional travel now, they kind of need him.

“There’s no way of contacting him?” a voice says weirdly close to MJ’s ear. She turns around to find that Carol Danvers has shifted closer. She has a weirdly calming voice of reason, for a white lady. “That can’t be right; Earth was supposed to be way more advanced than this by now. I’ll look through my stuff from the Kree and see if there’s anything that can reach…wherever he is.”

Natasha’s head suddenly pops up, eyes drawn together in thought. “I have to make a call,” she announces, and runs full-tilt into the facility before anyone else can take a breath. Bruce and Clint exchange a baffled look.

Everything is happening too much, too fast and all at once with no results to show. It’s exhausting, and disheartening, and MJ starts to feel fuzzy around the edges while the superhumans shift and talk around her. She doesn’t belong here, she realizes again, but this time with less bitterness and more acceptance. In this world she’s still a kid, gets to be one for at least another two years, and she isn’t about to give that up anymore. 

“Let’s go inside,” she says to May, but the older woman is sinking into a different kind of resignation, arms tightly crossed and feet planted on the ground. There’s a fine tremor rolling over her body that MJ can feel when she puts a hand on May’s arm, the fading adrenaline getting the best of her, too. 

“Come _on_ , May. It won’t do Peter any good if he gets back and you’re dead on your feet. Someone will come get us if there’s news.”

But she still won’t move. Her eyes squeeze shut behind her glasses, magnified and reflected behind the thick lenses shining under the facility’s lit windows, lips trembling as she struggles to keep it together after a week of uncertainty that refuses to end. “Just a few more minutes.”

Frustration wells in MJ, an underground spring starting to leak from a break between two boulders. “You _have_ to rest,” she repeats, sick of this now that she’s suddenly resigned herself to being a child. When May just shakes her head, MJ actually laughs because the role-reversal is just so extreme and so ridiculous. “Fine. Act worse than my toddler sister, I’m sure that’ll help. You know I’m scared, too? Peter’s my boyfriend and I love him and he might be dead, but even if he is, we already did that. He was already dead before, so if. So if he’s dead now, what’s the point in putting yourself through this again, May? There _is_ no point.”

May blinks, probably stunned by her frankness, the lights reflected in her glasses lenses shifting into a white vertical stripe that hides her eyes. “MJ…”

“I know you miss him,” she interrupts, trying to stop May from fighting so she can accept the truth sooner. When May shifts like she might move or turn her back, MJ takes her arms to hold her in place. “I miss him too. It _sucks_. But you _can’t_ kill yourself stressing over not knowing, May. It’s not what he would want; one way or the other, he would want you to be okay. Just like you’d want him to be okay if. If things were the other way around. You _know_ that, right?”

“MJ!” May repeats, as the reflected light in her glasses suddenly vanishes, totally disproportionate to the angle she’s at with the windows. She’s not even looking at MJ but beyond her, and she gets out of her own ass long enough to realize that there’s a commotion going on behind her. As she turns around her grip loosens, and May takes off running across the grass toward the dark spot burned into the turf. 

Thor’s unmistakable silhouette detaches from that dark spot to rejoin the Valkyrie in the light, leaving two smaller figures where the rainbow bridge left him. One stands, and one is prone on the grass. MJ’s heart leaps into her throat. Eenie, meenie, miney, mo.

Pale, bruised, thin, and alive, Peter steps forward into the light and her heart bursts.

It doesn’t even occur to MJ to try and get to him before May. He’s her kid, and MJ was just trying to force her to accept that he was probably still dead. She hasn’t earned the first heartfelt reunion, instead just stands back and watches as May clutches him to her and he clutches her to him, the both of them sobbing as the dual realities of this past week come crashing together and makes being together even sweeter than if Peter had just spent the last few days space-camping. 

Then, between his heaving breaths, he says something something _stabbed_ something _everything I could but_ something, and MJ realizes that Clint, Bruce, and Carol are standing over the other dark figure in the grass with their heads bowed. Whoever it is hasn’t moved a muscle, and MJ doesn’t have to look or think too hard to figure out that Tony Stark died and Peter had to watch it happen.

Her hand rests at the base of her throat, pressing lightly to keep herself grounded in the moment instead of flying off the handle. As much as she didn’t care for Tony Stark, she does care about Peter, like, _kind of a lot_ , and knows that losing his hero has to be be hard enough without witnessing it too. Her arms itch to wrap around him, now, even as she keeps her respectful distance, hands want to smooth the hair back from his face and check him for anything more serious than bruises, eyes want to take him in and never look away, except maybe to look at Tabby or a book once in a while. She wants to memorize everything about him like a set of flash cards. With the life he leads, he could be gone again tomorrow.

A good five minutes pass. Natasha is summoned from the depths of the building, phone still in hand, to join the vigil over Tony’s body. Peter and May finally break apart, both of them tear-stained and looking like a stiff breeze would knock them over. He still hasn’t noticed her, wrapped up in reuniting with his family, but she hears her name form in the spaces between cracks in his voice and almost jumps out of her own skin.

_Be cool be cool be cool be cool,_ she thinks frantically.

“Hey, loser,” she softly calls, and instead of being cool actually just bursts into tears the second he locks his eyes on her, because that’s just the kind of day she’s having. Stumbling toward one another, they meet with a clumsy crash of limbs and almost knock skulls in their haste to hug as tight as possible. The last great, terrible ache in the pit of MJ’s chest finally loosens, but the release of pressure makes her feel almost woozy. Fainting, however, is an extremely eighteenth-century move, so she breathes through her nose and toughs it out while shoving her face into the soft skin of Peter’s neck.

His suit feels different than the last time she touched him, smooth and hard instead of tensile. More like armor and with less damage than he usually receives on a messy operation. But those all become secondary sensations when Peter draws back to look at her like he’s trying to memorize her, too.

“I never thought I’d see you again,” he confesses, one hand gently wound into the curls at the nape of her neck. She can feel his thumb stroking back and forth against her scalp, brings her itching hands up to frame his stupid, beautiful face. Then a change comes over his expression, brows drawing together like they always do when he’s trying to figure out if he accidentally ditched on something important to play superheroes with the grown-ups. “…did I miss prom? I was _really_ excited to go.”

The smile almost splits her face in two as she starts to laugh. Junior prom is the farthest thing from her mind right now and has been for the last week, but now that she thinks about it, it was originally scheduled to happen tomorrow night. “We’ll figure it out later,” she assures him, and pulls him in for a kiss. “I missed you.”

His lips curve into a tremulous smile against hers, and his arms come up around her again to hold her tight.

The world makes sense again.

* * *

An Avenger’s funeral is an international affair, with people flying in from countries she’s never even heard of to pay their respects. There’s barely enough space in the entire cemetery for everyone wanting to attend; they have to start turning people away for the actual burial, only allowing in family and fellow Avengers.

And, apparently, their plus-ones. 

MJ’s dress is itchy and the tag is poking her right between the shoulder blades, but she’s not inconsiderate enough to fidget while a nondenominational chaplain talks about redemption through good works. Even though Peter Parker isn't a known Avenger he was allowed in as Tony's protege. She keeps her eyes on the grass and her hand in Peter’s so she doesn’t have to notice the naked grief on the faces of everyone around. Accidentally catching sight of the ugly conflicted feelings on Wanda Maximoff’s face, rapidly yo-yoing between remorse and vindication, was a bad enough way to start the day.

The news circuits have been pretty much saturated with back-to-back broadcasts, alternating between Tony Stark’s tragic death at Thanos’s hand, and Carol Danvers’s miraculous reappearance after going mysteriously missing in the mid-90s. She and Thor do tag-team interviews breaking down what to know about intergalactic relations with the Kree and what  the world should do to prepare for future threats. For someone who’s been out of touch for almost thirty years her style game is pretty on-point, because MJ knows for a fact (thanks, Peter) that she doesn’t have a personal stylist.

There’s also a small percentage of news coverage devoted to what can only be compared to the Berenstein/Berenstain phenomenon that cropped up a few years ago. Those kids’ books, right? With the bear family. There were these surveys done that revealed, like, a shocking number of people were under the impression the characters' last name was spelled Berenstein. No, not even an impression, they were _stone-cold convinced_ to the point of going to their parents’ houses and digging up their childhood books to prove…that it was actually spelled _Berenstain_ all along. It was a mental pandemic that went viral within hours, and it’s the literal only thing people can really use to compare with what happened the day two timelines converged. Proof that alternate universes exist living in the minds of everyone in the known galaxy. Totally messed up.

Peter’s hand twitches in hers as the first fistful of dirt is tossed onto the coffin by by a xanax-numbed Pepper Potts, and MJ gives his fingers a gentle squeeze. At least she can be here for him, even if she feels useless about pretty much everything else.

_Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust._

That particular couplet seems shockingly inappropriate, but she doesn’t plan on making any comments.

There’s a luncheon planned after the graveside service. Peter admits in a low voice that he doesn’t want to go, it’s going to be a zoo, so they wander off across the cemetery to take the subway back to his place. Ned’s probably already there; he’s been showing May how to make all kinds of Filipino recipes his grandma taught him as a kid. Probably gives him an outlet to process things on his end, too.

MJ hasn’t had it in her to ask what Peter or Mom or Dad remembers about dying, if they went somewhere else or fell into a total lapse of awareness until the moment of convergence. Or if there’s a third, scarier thing she hasn’t even considered yet. That’s why she hasn’t asked. Living in a world without them all was hard enough; if they experienced anything other than total heavenly peace while they were gone, she doesn’t think she can take it.

There’s a change of clothes waiting for her in Peter’s room; she stayed over last night to avoid being late when the funeral procession inevitably stopped up traffic. Nothing kinky, she slept in the top bunk…at least until May did her _wait-until-they’re-asleep-and-peek-in_ check. Because, _catch this_ , they were only _pretending_ to be asleep until that point. Then she snuck down into the bottom bunk and held Peter like the little spoon they both know and accept that he is. Still nothing kinky, though. The impending burial of his hero was kind of a mood killer.

“You’re back early!” Ned exclaims as they cross the threshold. The door isn’t even closed behind them all the way before he goes in for a group hug. “The chicken won’t be ready for hours!”

“That’s okay,” Peter murmurs into Ned’s warm shoulder. “I’m not hungry right now anyway. You guys wanna watch a movie in my room or something?”

MJ’s the first to withdraw from the hug, giving Ned a pat on the back before crossing toward Peter’s bedroom. “I’m gonna change first. Make popcorn? Let’s watch something funny. Not, like, Mean Girls or anything, though. And no Star Wars, _please_ , I’m so oversaturated on Jedi; unless it’s the _one_ movie in the _entire world_ that will make you feel better, Peter, it’s off the table.”

“I love you!” Peter calls through the bedroom door as she wrestles out of her dress, smiling to herself.

Now in her comfy pajamas—she decides to forego street clothes altogether—and popcorn popped, she and the boys huddle up on the bottom bunk…and don’t watch a movie. Not right away, at least. She and Ned are waiting for Peter to take point, move at his own pace, all those things you're supposed to do when grieving, but he sits between them like a wet towel dangling off the edge of the mattress, staring down at his hands where they dangle between his knees. It’s weird, seeing him so still. Usually he’s full of more energy than that one robotic bunny from TV.

“Can I show you guys something?” he asks, his voice barely audible. The anxiety she's been pushing back since the convergence raises its head and sniffs the air.

“That question usually only leads to trouble,” she says, trying and failing sound like her normal self, “but sure. I guess it must be, like, really important to put off watching Star Wars _again_.” He picks up his head to smile, nudging her shoulder with his.

“We got your back, Peter,” Ned chimes in with a bracing pat to Peter’s leg, which wins him a smile, too. “What’s up?”

After another few long seconds of hesitation, Peter stands and halfway crosses the tiny bedroom before pivoting on his heel to face them again. His eyes flash restlessly between MJ’s face and Ned’s, and she feels another lurch wondering if maybe he’s going to tell them something about…about the snap. About being dead. Like maybe it changed him, or left a scar, or something worse. It takes effort not to chew her nails and give him her full attention.

“I don’t really know where it came from,” Peter starts to explain, hands twitching at his sides with frenetic energy. “It just kind of…showed up, yesterday.”

To break the tension (and relieve the scream trying to form in her throat), she asks: “Is this something I should be getting tested for?” It has both the benefit of making Peter smile and making Ned whine because _Gross, MJ, I don’t want to think about that!_

“It’s not that,” Peter breathes out, and drags a hand through his hair. “It’s…I think maybe Mister Stark left me something. And. And maybe Pepper or Happy left it for me, but. But they didn’t want to talk about it, because of…so they just, like. _Broke in_ or something and put it there. But I was home all day, so. I don’t know. But _anyway_ , I just. It’s kind of. It’s kind of weird. Like maybe…I don’t know. I keep thinking about how he made me that space suit, almost like he _knew_ I would need it, so maybe because of the-the convergence, he knew something else would happen, too.”

“Like what?” Ned asks, and MJ silently thanks him because she thinks if she opens her mouth now she’ll throw up. No more alien nonsense, please, not for at least another six months.

“I don’t know,” Peter shrugs and crosses back to his closet door. “It’s, like. I think maybe a stealth suit, since mine is so, you know, noticeable. The design is _really different_ , though, it kind of creeps me out. I haven’t tried it out yet, obviously, with everything. It just feels so…like, way too soon. I don’t…”

He pulls the closet door open, and without awaiting the permission of her head MJ’s body stands to look inside. Ned crowds in shoulder-to-shoulder with her, the both of them peering over Peter’s shoulders into the closet. 

“…I don’t really want to believe it’s the last suit he’ll ever make me,” Peter finishes with a shrug, reaching in to take the new suit out by the hanger, like he's afraid even to touch it.

Beside her, Ned gasps. 

“What the _fuck?_ ” MJ breathes out. “Peter, that thing is seriously messed up.”

“I mean, the first suit had interrogation mode,” Peter starts to explain, but MJ’s too shocked by the suit, she has to cut him off. “Maybe it's just more threatening, like..."

“Put it away,” she says, her own voice sounding far away in her ears, and she finds herself taking three steps backward from the open closet and offending garment. “I’m serious, Peter, I don’t like it. It doesn’t look good for anything but, like, hardcore porn or murder, or both at the same time. Put it _away_.”

He puts the new suit away, quickly closing the door on it. “Sorry,” Peter mutters, biting his lower lip and looking up at her through his long floppy bangs. “I didn’t think…it _is_ pretty creepy, huh? Especially for Mister Stark.”

Ned scoffs and returns to the lower bunk. “Understatement, dude,” she says sagely. "We can mess with it sometime if you want, but I think maybe that was a few models behind its destined acceptable release phase. Pepper or Happy or _whoever_ left it there probably just wanted you to have it as a keepsake, because that is _not_ going to be received well by the public.”

Nodding to himself, Peter returns to the bottom bunk at Ned’s side and pulls out his laptop. “You guys are right. Sorry, I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“We’re obviously _really_ put out about it,” MJ retorts on autopilot. Every step back to the bed—and closer to the closet—is like walking through knee-deep mud. She can’t get traction, eyes stuck to the closet door like it’s going to open on its own or something equally horrifying. Then she’s back to the bed, because that bedroom is seriously only about five steps across anyway, sitting on Peter’s other side. “Come on, time for _Return of the Jedi_ , I know you want it.”

Peter starts the movie. They eat popcorn. Since she’s seen this timeless classic approximately eighty thousand times by now, MJ allows her mind to wander. Or, well, she sits helpless as it insists on wandering despite her best effort not to think about that thing in the closet. It’s not a suit, it _can’t_ be a real suit, it had to be meant as a prank or something. Even with her eyes fixed on Luke Skywalker, she can’t stop seeing its face in her mind. The black, glossy, almost oily base. The heavy-lidded, non-geometric but somehow also non-organic white eyes. Sleeping tonight won’t come easy, haunted by that sight.

That gaping, hungry grin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...that's it. I feel kind of weird about it, just because I had no plan going in how this fic would go at all, let alone end. I do think it's exactly how it should end based on my original plans for the Home Again sequel. 
> 
> If you're interested in following more of my work/shitposts, have questions, or would like to prompt me for drabbles within this or any MCU universe, I can be found on tumblr as hulksmashmouth. Come visit, I'm lonely over there! Seriously, I only have 19 followers bc the blog is new.
> 
> I'm sure a lot of you can guess what will be coming based on that last bit, BUT don't get too excited for anything to be posted (or even written) any time soon. I have a lot of Big Life Things coming up and really want to try and finish at least one of the several screenplays I've been juggling for six months before I start up on fanfic again. 
> 
> So. I'm aiming for around November to start on the big sequel. More drabbles/one shots in this universe will probably happen in the meantime, though.
> 
> PLEASE SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS!! I have loved every single one of your comments, and now that I'm finished (and no longer in danger of spoiling my own fic from excitement) I feel like I can start replying to them!


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